tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45501507876730273202023-11-15T10:23:20.831-08:00Daughters of the Shadow Men MemoirGerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-3456983487928969322013-02-11T18:37:00.000-08:002013-11-21T10:22:16.977-08:00Memoir: Chapter 22: Daddy and I ride down to drive some cattle on King's Bench up on little Sinking Water Bench to take advantage of the snowfall<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">During <span style="font-size: small;">my</span> last winter at home <span style="font-size: small;">during childhood</span>, when I was twelve, Daddy deemed me experienced on a horse enough to promote me to some long distance jobs of cow punching. A heavy snow fell during the early winter and that night he did some thinking. The next morning he asked me if I wanted to take a ride down to Kings Bench. He said that he wanted to put some cattle upon a little bench called Sinking Water because the<span style="font-size: small;">y</span> would be able to eat snow for water and could browse the good feed up there. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">He and Grandpa King and some of those other Boulder cattle ranchers were probably the only men in the world who thought <span style="font-size: small;">such jobs needed doing</span>. I argued with him. I did. I was nervous about being his helper and as it turned out I was right to be concerned.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But as I said once Daddy had an idea concerning the well being of his cattle, he could not be deterred. So we set off for Kings Bench at quite a fast clip the next morning. Apparently there was access to water on Kings Bench<span style="font-size: small;">. I d<span style="font-size: small;">o</span>n't really kn<span style="font-size: small;">ow. </span></span> I wonder now about water <span style="font-size: small;">for the stock to drink</span> on all those benches where they used to run their <span style="font-size: small;">cattle</span>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By this time, the winter range had been divided so Daddy and Cecil, Grandpa's main hired man, wouldn't have to camp out together any more. Ever since Daddy took away some of Cecil's precious upper pasture which really belonged to Grandpa<span style="font-size: small;">, Cecil's</span> resentment could not be contained. <span style="font-size: small;">Cecil</span> did see to it that he and Grandpa got the best winter range, which was Bounds Bench, further on down, but Daddy agreed as he had gotten to hating those long rides on horseback down to their benches. </span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Once we got <span style="font-size: small;">up to</span> Kings Bench, Daddy started rounding up a herd of cattle including an old cow or two he said he been up to Sinking Water before. He <span style="font-size: small;">said</span> when we got to where the cattle were going to have to go up this trail that wasn't really visible to me at all I was to push the herd from the back while he herded the old cows in front toward their destination. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Well, the first time I was being too timid to push them Daddy said rather mildly as the cattle broke away from me and scattered, but the second time they broke away, he let out some pretty good curses. We had not come all that way for nothing so I knew I better settle down and follow his directions better or we would be there all 'god damned' day as he put it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When he yelled, “Push 'em, push 'em!” the third time, I <span style="font-size: small;">spurred</span> my horse determined not to let one critter turn back. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I saw the cattle jostling that heifer toward the edge but I couldn't believe it when she tumbled off into what sounded like a bottomless canyon. You could hear her bellering a<span style="font-size: small;"> lon<span style="font-size: small;">g</span> time a<span style="font-size: small;">fter</span> she fell</span>! I h<span style="font-size: small;">ad <span style="font-size: small;">killed <span style="font-size: small;">that heifer</span> for sure!</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I kept on pushing at Daddy's command and we got all but her up on Sinking Water, but I could see Daddy was mighty disgruntled over what had happened to that heifer. </span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">He was so disg<span style="font-size: small;">usted</span> he cussed practically all the way home. I remember he said once that that heifer's death just wiped out all the profit of him and me coming down there and boosting those cattle up on Sinking Water to get that good feed. </span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">He was mad enough that I did not dare argue with him. I did hope it would be quite a while before he thought up some<span style="font-size: small;"> other giant cow punching job</span> for him and me to do. <span style="font-size: small;">Fancy c</span>ow punching out on the winter range was proving to be considerably <span style="font-size: small;">harde<span style="font-size: small;">r <span style="font-size: small;">than</span> just driving them along a trail </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">!</span> </span></span> </div>
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Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-6643879614847742132011-08-16T10:21:00.000-07:002013-12-09T09:08:56.252-08:00Memor: Chapter 53: Meeting Dr. Davis in Salt Lake and going to visit Dean in SpokaneA little over a month after I came home from the hospital, Mother and Dad took me back to Salt Lake to keep the appointment with Dr. Davis. Before I met him I returned very briefly to the University campus. After I got there I did not feel like trying to see anyone, but as I wandered around I happened to run into Archie, who had become such an actor in demand in my junior year. He was still doing a lot of theater he informed me. I referred to being away which he had obviously heard about because he said, "I have a little trouble being sympathetic to people who just imagine their troubles!"<br />
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I could not believe he would say such a mean thing knowing absolutely nothing about what had transpired or was involved in my hospitalization, but I gathered he had been jealous of the reactions in the theater department. He was after all dying of the real thing. I probably could not have forgiven him as soon as I did if I had not heard that he did die two or three years later, just as he predicted he would, while I am still alive at the age of 80. He was obviously a good deal sicker than I was.<br />
But I did walk away from him like the walking wounded. After he said that I did not think there was any use trying to see anybody else in the theater department. Marilyn, who I called, said that Dr. Lees had announced that he would retire due to health problems at the end of the year, I figured so people could enjoy as much as possible the final days of his notable reign over the theater department as a famous Shakespearean director. <br />
She also said that June, the young Mormon theater major, had stepped in at very short notice, memorized, and performed my role as the young Amish girl in the play on the road. I thought she would have been a perfect second choice. Marilyn asked me very little about my hospitalization. She like others was very cautious about even referring to it. I had resumed relations with her by mail, as well as with Sharon and even Laurence. He and I exchanged a couple of more letters as I was curious as to how he would react, but he was so guarded I soon ceased to wonder. <br />
The notable geniuses I had met at the University slowly left my life one by one, Laurence and finally Sharon. Marilyn and I continued to correspond for several years, too, until she did not answer one of my letters. And that was the end of that friendship although I continued to have fond memories of both Marilyn and Sharon for the kindnesses they had shown me through out my years at the University, and even after, until it was obvious we were leading such different lives, letters became meaningless.<br />
I went down to the meeting at the Salt Lake County Hospital with some trepidation, but Dr. Davis greeted me with real concern about how I was recovering. He said that his year of Internship was drawing to a close and he had applied to a California hospital for his residency. He would be leaving Salt Lake soon.<br />
When I went to leave he held out his arms to me for a hug and the hug turned into a kiss that was very passionate but limited. We really were saying good-bye by mutual consent.<br />
He accompanied me to the street where I intended to call a taxi when he asked me how far away I lived, could we walk there? I said it was about twenty blocks, but yes, I thought I could handle that. We started walking through snow. I was thinking I am always going to remember this, when Dr. Davis surprised me again.<br />
When we were just about three blocks from Grandpa Wilson's where I was staying, he stopped me and picked me up in his arms and carried me the rest of the way. I do not think a man had ever made a gesture to me that was so gratuitously tender. I thought he would be a great doctor. He was a healer by instinct. <br />
When we reached Grandpa's place, he set me down and watched me as I waved good-bye and turned away from him to go into the house.<br />
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It seemed that life was about a lot of new beginnings and inevitable endings of many relationships.<br />
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But when Dean did not come home for Christmas, maybe because he was hesitant about renewing a relationship with me after I had been in a psych ward, Pole, his cousin buddy, was very enthusiastic about a suggestion I made to go see Dean in Spokane. I just did not think Dean believed that I was still the same person, only perhaps even better because I was freer than I had been prior to my shocking detainment in the custody of the psychiatrists. I had also written to him about the part Dr. Davis had played in my hospitalization and the fact that I had been been attracted to him which may have put him off. <br />
Sister Margie agreed to go with Pole and me before she had to return to the university after the holidays, and as we traveled through Idaho which was hauntingly beautiful at that time of the year, covered with snow, I developed an increasingly euphoric feeling that my adult life was now about to begin, more real than it had ever been before. Because I was in charge at last. Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-23645597975973658052011-08-15T11:33:00.000-07:002013-12-09T06:24:47.625-08:00Memoir: Chapter 52: Telling someone in the psych ward I had been molested by BillDuring the ten days that I continued to spend in the psych ward, I told Dr. Davis about being molested by Bill at five years old and not being able to tell anyone. I told him that I feared that murder would result, that I was sure my dad would not wait for law enforcement to act. He would take the law into his own hands and try to kill Bill if he could. I debated about telling Dr. Davis about the affair I thought was going on between Bill and my dad and that part of Bill's motivation for targeting me was because he was very angry at my dad for leaving him home on the weekends while he went to party with other guys. I decided against it, because Dr. Davis appeared to be as straight as he could possibly be. I thought he would have a bad reaction to hearing that I was the daughter of such a man and what is more had suspected this connection between the two men at the time, which caused me to be all the more certain that my dad would try to kill Bill because he was so nervy it would be hard to tell what he might tell law enforcement.<br />
Dr. Davis was from California. I did not know if he would understand that my dad was the son of one of the many old time cowboys who rode the western trails in those days. Grandpa King had helped drive a herd of horses to Chicago twice. Most of these men had very little opportunity to connect up with women. Some of them were bound to turn to other males for sexual gratification. This might seem totally unacceptable to Dr. Davis while it seemed merely human to me and to be expected under certain circumstances. <br />
Plus Utah had once been the home of a great many Mormon polygamists. When a married man lusted after another woman he took her as another wife. My grandparents on my mother's side were descended from Mormon polygamists, but instead of being able to take more wives my Grandfather Wilson was forced to sneak around and lie about any connection he made to another woman, just as I suspected my Grandfather King of sneaking around and lying about any connection he made to another male after he was married. <br />
Both had developed the most fearful defenses in order not to be confronted or accused. Now my parents were doing the same thing. <br />
Dr. Davis was probably experiencing one of his first strong attractions to another woman while married. If he was dedicated to being honest, he would not act on these feelings, for me or for any other woman with an affair. While I had committed myself to never acting like my mother and dad. I was determined to change the pattern.<br />
I could acknowledge this attraction between us, but I could be very cautious about getting alone with him.<br />
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I would be put to the test in a little over a month after I left the hospital, when Dr. Davis wanted to see me in Salt Lake he said to see how I was recovering. He would be on another rotation by then, but he made an appointment for me to see him at the County Hospital. I was going to keep that appointment because of all he had done for me, even though he had warned me that he had feelings for me. But I thought he was just as determined as I was not do something he would regret. Well, we would see. <br />
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Dean, my Escalante boyfriend, managing to come by a number, called me in the psych ward and reminded me that he was still in the running for my attention. He actually sounded angry because I had not written and told him what was going on. I said that I would write to him as soon as I got home and try to explain.<br />
I also told Dr. Davis about Dean's telephone call. But I brushed over the fact that Dean was an alcoholic which meant to me that he was another outlaw just as my dad had always been. If I married him, I would be marrying a younger version of my dad, hot tempered enough to bully a woman who displeased him, especially when he was under the influence. I had seen my dad take a butcher knife to my mother's throat when he was drunk. I had already encountered the devil in Dean's eyes several times when he was drinking.<br />
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I thought outlawry came easier to Utah men because of the religion, widely considered to be a cult. Polygamy violated the rules of good conduct in almost anybody's book except obviously those who had allowed themselves to be converted to it. Dean was actually descended from a brother to the Prophet Joseph Smith who had introduced the controversial revelation from God that plural marriage was required for Mormon men to be able to enter the highest degree of heaven. <br />
Soon other Mormon men besides the Prophet Joseph Smith were able to persuade susceptible women to be plural wives.<br />
After polygamy was abandoned by main stream Mormons, Utah still probably tolerated a good many more polygamists than most states. The FLDS branch of the church which had refused to give it up had a large presence in southern Utah. I saw polygamists all the time there, and there were sects in the cities as well. Nobody was really counting. Mormons had suffered greatly from criticism of polygamy from practically the whole world, so they talked as little as possible to outsiders about these communities in their midst still practicing polygamy. <br />
I found myself avoiding the subject with Dr. Davis, trying to appear as normal as possible, so that the last days that I would probably ever see and talk to him would not be marred by revelations about my background he might not be able to handle.<br />
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I would probably marry Dean if he was still willing after I had been committed to a psych ward. He was the only one of my boyfriends that had sustained an interest in me that I thought could handle my history because his was very similar. Only now I wasn't afraid to die, so I would be opposing whatever he said or did to me I thought was wrong, no matter what he did to me. He did not know what he was in for if he ever had enough nerve to marry the likes of me.<br />
Even my dad knew I had changed. The minute I turned my face to the wall and refused to talk to him, he knew he could not bully me as he had been doing. The days of telling me what professions I was limited to if he was going to send me to school were over. As far as I was concerned I had earned my college education working for him and always trying to save his damned life. The psychiatrists had gone on to try to break me and had not succeeded. I showed them I was not afraid to die if I had to to stop them from giving me electric shock against my will.<br />
So Dr. Branch ended up not daring to give it to me. He was afraid I really would die on him. This was about the only reason he would ever have let go of me and allowed me to go home. Otherwise he would have surely reasoned that a few shock treatments would not hurt me. After a few of those I was bound to be more tractable.<br />
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When my dad and mother came to get me, Dr, Davis, the Intern, was instructed to do the talking to them. I don't know what he said to them, but he did tell them I had been molested by Bill which Mother told me later. So now they knew that. I don't know if he told them about what Dr. Branch was calling a catatonic seizure. If he did, they never mentioned it.<br />
But it was obvious that I was a good deal more fragile than I had been when they last saw me. In fact, the night we got home, I prayed all night without stopping just to keep my mind from flying apart on me. I felt if it split apart as it was threatening to do, I would never be normal again. I experienced that night what it might be to lose your mind.<br />
But I gradually started feeling better. Naturally if anyone taxed my strength at all, I was forced to go silent in order not to get too exhausted with very bad results. If I got overly strained, one of the most frightening symptoms I experienced was going numb in my sleep. A voice would wake me by shouting in my inner ear, "Wake up, you are dying!" I would have to think frantically about what could have strained me to that point, so that I could work through whatever it was, relaxing my nervous system enough to restore feeling to my body. I learned to get very calm before I allowed myself to drop off to sleep.<br />
My going silent spooked people the most. But there was really no other way I could protect myself from people's unrealistic expectations. I was not the same. I had been through a terrible ordeal. So people had to learn to respect that. <br />
Most who kept on wanting to talk to me learned not to push me. Although I remember going to some young woman's house who said something to me I could not handle. I fell silent, so she defiantly went silent, too. We sat for around twenty minutes in complete silence and then I got up and left.<br />
I don't know what she told people, maybe that she taught me a lesson for inflicting my spooky silence on her. She just went silent, too, but she never wanted to interact with me again. Others were more considerate. They did not not hold my silence against me. Instead they seem to respect it was for a good reason.<br />
My dad saw to it that nobody tried to bully me when he was around. Once in a while my mother would lose her temper and say something wildly inappropriate like one day when she and I and my dad were arguing, she told me that she and Daddy would just have to lock me in my room if I continued to act as I was doing, I assumed chain me to the bed. My dad acted thoroughly disgusted with her.<br />
Otherwise she even went around and asked some younger women to please try to talk to me as I had quit talking entirely. She said I would not talk to her, but maybe I would to them if they persisted. Years later she would tell people that I refused to talk to my little boy and she had to teach him to talk because he was growing up without knowing how. He was imitating me and refusing to talk. Maybe he did imitate me, I am not sure, because he became a boy of extremely few words. She probably did try to get him to talk. But I certainly had not fallen completely silent. I had always been a talker and I still was, but I just made sure that what I said counted more. <br />
I felt that for years the wheel of my being had been slowly forced off its axis and was spinning uselessly in space. I had forced the wheel back into place and now everything I said and did was effective again, while before I had started talking way too much to the people I did not fear, and I had not resisted enough the people who bullied me. Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-2578679639429366952011-08-14T18:57:00.000-07:002013-12-07T12:25:59.402-08:00Memoir: Chapter 51: Dr. Davis, the Intern, tells Dr. Branch after my near death experience he has fallen in love with meAs I was lying in bed the next morning preparing to see Dr. Davis and talk to him about what happened yesterday, I felt such a rush of love for him, thinking of him sitting by my bed for two hours, that I felt guilty. He was married, and I was going to have to push those thoughts out of my mind. As I started to make the effort to do what I considered the right thing I went numb. I could not feel anything but my teeth and my bones. I instantly realized that I could not be banishing any support coming my way no matter what it caused me to feel. I was just going to have to love Dr. Davis because of the emotion he had dared to show for me. I was too close to death to be rejecting anything that was positive and made me feel better. To my relief the feeling began to come slowly back into my flesh.<br />
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I was going to have to be careful, very careful, even about what I thought. The slightest effort that took something away from me pushed me to the edge again.<br />
When I saw Dr. Davis he asked me if I could explain to him what happened yesterday. But before I could begin he said that he had told Dr. Branch that he had fallen in love with me when he saw him that morning. He said he asked him if he wanted him to continue with my case because of this emotional attachment he was forming. I was upset because he had even suggested to Dr. Branch that he might want to take him off my case. He said Dr. Branch said no, that he wanted him to continue talking to me. He said he would make a decision later about my treatment.<br />
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That was frightening to hear. Could he still be trying to decide whether he would prescribe shock treatment? I wondered if Dr. Davis had not told him he was in love with me to convey to him that he now had an invested interest in what happened to me. If any further damage occurred to me he would be a witness.<br />
I knew Dr. Davis could not criticize Dr. Branch. He would just have to be polite to him as I had to be until he could work through his issues with me.<br />
I told Dr. Davis that I also had developed some very strong feeling for him which I had tried to drive out of my mind that morning, and had nearly died again as a result. I described going numb clear to my teeth and bones. I said it felt like the last sensation I would have before I became a lifeless corpse.<br />
"What happened yesterday in the day room?" Dr. Davis persisted in questioning me.<br />
I explained, "Well, it was like I had a giant tantrum. I was so angry over having to fight against shock treatment. I did not consider myself unhinged when Dr. Andersen incarcerated me. I thought he over reacted. He did everything too fast. He knew nothing about me. He was just guessing.<br />
In the day room it occurred to me not to take a deeper breath until their policy toward me changed. Dr. Branch thought he could bully me into conceding that I might be mentally ill enough to need treatment. Although you could say that I proved I really was insane by what I did to stop them from giving it to me. Dr. Branch would not believe there was anything seriously wrong with me. After I willed myself to die for four hours he would know there was something very wrong with me. I would then be considered too insane to give shock treatment. If I could come that close to dying all by myself, I could probably expire with shock treatment."<br />
Dr. Davis nodded gravely at my logic, and seemed to understand it after a fashion. At that moment he probably thought I was the most insane girl he had ever met, which was why he had fallen in love with me, I was certain. <br />
He almost read my mind by saying out loud, "I feel like I have been on a giant roller coaster ride ever since I met you. It's been a thrill a minute."<br />
I thought it would take a lot to get to this battle scarred veteran, but I had done it. <br />
He seemed to feel a little guilt of his own. "I don't even know why I have been so susceptible to you. I think it is because I really wasn't madly in love with my wife when I married her, but she was from my world, and I thought she would be the best suited to be my companion when I became a doctor. I simply could not hurt her after all she had done for me after the war, so I married her."<br />
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I thought about how totally unsuited I was to be a doctor's wife, especially after what I had done to myself yesterday. I was going to be weeks recovering and would probably never be the same again. I knew I had broken something pretty vital. Was bound to have done. <br />
"I think you are infatuated, not in love," I said, "You need to realize I am a cow girl from southern Utah. I was raised by an outlaw father. I was just thinking the other day that is probably why I am capable of going to such extremes. This will pass, but I have never needed anybody's love so bad in my life as I have needed yours during this trial. I don't think I could have survived without you."<br />
Dr. Davis said that he would contact me as soon as he had any word from Dr. Branch. <br />
That afternoon he came toward me with a white official looking paper in his hand. He said, "Dr. Branch is going to let you go home, but you need to sign this paper first."<br />
It was a paper that said I had volunteered to enter the hospital. "This is a lie!" I burst out. "I was committed against my will."<br />
Dr. Davis continued to hold out the paper to me with such a pleading look on his face, I took it and signed that lying document even though it was against my principles. If Dr. Branch was willing to forget electric shock and let me go home in exchange for my guarantee that I would not sue, he had a bargain. Sue, that was a laugh. I just hoped I did not die after I got home. Let alone take anybody to court. <br />
After I signed, Dr. Davis said, "You will have to stay ten more days so they can make sure you are okay." I figured they were taking that precaution in case I had any more strange seizures. But my giant rage left me as soon as he told me I could go home. And I knew I needed recovery time before I dared to go back to southern Utah and the mad house where Mother and Dad had lived for years, fought, and thought about killing each other.<br />
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"We will be talking," promised Dr. Davis. "Until you leave." He looked happy at the prospect. I know I was very much happier, and relieved.<br />
As for the men in white, I made a solemn vow they would never capture me again. I knew now I could not trust 'em. Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-20138690640983322542011-08-13T12:08:00.000-07:002013-12-07T09:54:16.516-08:00Memoir: Chapter 50: Mother and Dad come to Salt Lake, I won't talk to them either, they sign for my treatmentsI had not been able to talk to Margie hardly at all on her first visit to the psych ward. She was naturally very upset and wanting explanations, but I could not really give her any since I couldn't tell her anything significant about myself. I had not been able to tell any of the sisters the problems that had been on my mind for years, about the molesters, what I thought my dad was doing. I did not even tell them when I developed the frightening case of fatigue and could hardly drag myself out of bed in the morning. This was just something for me to get over the best way possible because if I wasn't ready to tell Mother and Dad, I could hardly tell my sisters. Margie, who had become somewhat Mother's working companion in the years she had been confined to housework because of her asthma, would have told Mother anything I said immediately. The other sisters I considered too young to burden.<br />
Margie said she had called Mother and Dad about my incarceration who were naturally extremely shocked, but said they could not leave that day but would arrive on the third day after my commitment. I knew that was going to be a very difficult encounter, so there was no use talking about anything until I had gotten through that.<br />
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Mother and Dad arrived at the psych ward sometime in the afternoon of the third day. Dr. Davis, the in-hospital Intern, had just taken over my case, and would have seen them. They came rushing into my room, and I had the awful realization, seeing the looks on their faces, that I was not going to be able to talk to them. They both looked extremely agitated and angry as though at last they were going to get an explanation out of me. I knew they would be highly reactive to any reason I could give them, and nothing whatsoever would be accomplished. They were as bad or worse than anybody else I had felt forced to quit talking to because they were way too angry under the circumstances.<br />
I was becoming exhausted from not having slept and from the strain I had been experiencing in the psych ward, and for weeks before that. I could feel the fatigue that had once frightened me so badly years before flickering around the edges of my being, threatening to envelop me like an ominous black shadow. I had to save my strength to fight the doctors. Something was wrong with me. Electric shock could kill me!<br />
I simply could not respond to my parents. I turned my face away toward the wall. Mother became instantly enraged and practically leaped across the room as though to grab me and force me to talk. I could feel her thinking, "You are not going to be allowed to disrespect me like this!" <br />
Daddy stopped her and made her go back to the other side of the room with him. Then he got her to go outside with him. They did not return.<br />
Later, Dr. Davis, who was still confused about what was considered wrong with me, said that my parents said I would not talk to them. Was there any reason for that?<br />
I told him that they were demanding explanations which I did not have the strength to give them that they would not have been able to accept, in any case. I could picture a family squabble going on in the psych ward, all of us screaming and shouting at the top of our lungs as heated accusations were flung back and forth between each other. I said, "Mother tried to force me to talk, but Daddy stopped her." He nodded and did not pursue the matter any further.<br />
The next day Margie came by to ask me why I had not talked to Mother and Dad. I said, "You know how they are. They were neither calm or rational. Mother was going to force me to talk to her. Isn't that inappropriate behavior for a family member in a psych ward? They have to stop acting like maniacs somewhere. Why not start now?" <br />
"Daddy thinks you are really sick," said Margie, on the verge of tears, although it would have been very hard for her to cry, as she was extremely tough from surviving some very scary bouts of asthma. "Mother said he cried all night and said it was all his fault!"<br />
"It is time he started taking some responsibility," I said, "But I could not take a chance on either one of them being calm and sensible for five minutes."<br />
"I am just wondering when you will refuse to talk to me," Margie said.<br />
"As long as you don't waste my energy arguing with me I will talk to you," I said. <br />
I did not want to tell Margie that I was afraid of the fatigue that I thought could at any point start overwhelming me. I did not want to tell her I thought things were going to get worse because I simply did not know, but I had a very good idea they would.<br />
<br />
I brought up electric shock to Dr. Davis on the morning of my fourth day. He looked uncomfortable but said that I should probably prepare myself for a series of treatments. I immediately suspected that he had been instructed to get Mother and Dad's written permission for my shock treatment while they were there. Of course they would have signed anything at that point. I expected they would have been scared into it from me not talking to them, if nothing else. Not talking to them had been a risk. I could alienate them. They would no longer be my allies, especially Mother who never forgave or forget what she considered a slight. But I did not think I had any other choice, they were so over emotional. <br />
Did the doctors imagine my parents were sane? No, I am sure psychiatrists were very accustomed to the whole family of a patient showing signs of insanity, too, but I was the one who had been incarcerated, so as my legal parents they were required to sign for my treatment. <br />
I said, "But I won't agree to have it. There is something wrong with me. I don't think I should have electric shock treatment. I am afraid it might kill me." <br />
Dr. Davis looked even more uncomfortable but waited for further explanation. I tried to explain about feeling that my fatigue years before signaled the onset of a disease like leukemia. I thought I was going to die, but when school started and I was able to sit down most of the day I started to get better. I said I thought this fatigue stemmed from a strange virus I got a year or so before which nobody else in town had. I thought I developed it because I was the most stressed kid in town."<br />
"Did your parents know about this?"<br />
"No, I decided I would wait until I collapsed. I didn't want to face the fact I might have a fatal disease. Besides, they might have thought I was just trying to get out of work, since the only symptom I was experiencing at that point was fatigue. But it was a fatigue so bad it scared me. I could hardly drag myself out of bed in the morning. A night's rest didn't seem to do me any good." <br />
Dr. Davis looked faintly dubious but he said that he would call Dr. Branch and ask that he let me explain to him my fears about having electric shock therapy. He must have been somewhat concerned because he came back almost immediately and said that I was to see Dr. Branch that afternoon, which was the 4th day. He would give me 20 minutes, since he was an extremely busy man. <br />
In the meantime Dr. Davis wanted me to join a therapist who was on the ward at this very time to conduct a round table with some of the patients. Maybe I could sit in on that and express some of my misgivings about shock treatment. <br />
I soon found a way to bring it up, saying that I thought it might be detrimental to my health, and I was upset because I had been told I could not refuse shock treatment. A heavy set woman probably in her early fifties spoke up, "Oh you don't have to be afraid of electric shock. I have had 200 electric shock treatments!"<br />
I was so taken back by this strong endorsement of shock treatment, that I could not help but explain out loud at the very number. "Two hundred electric shock treatments!!" <br />
I had already witnessed the extreme mental confusion of several patients when they returned from treatments. They looked pretty out of it to me, but I had been assured they would feel better after a while. In a few weeks they would regain their memories. <br />
As near as I could tell the theory was although they did not quite know what electric shock did, it took the patient out of their present reality so that an obsessive line of thinking could be interrupted. After the patient recovered they were often relieved of a heavy burden of worry and anxiety that had led to hospitalization. Why wouldn't that be good for me?<br />
The point was I did not want to stop thinking about the problems that had beset me and my family for years, because otherwise how would we be able to make progress in solving them? I was just getting a good start. <br />
My dad was now being confronted for the first time by people of authority, after a lot of thinking and effort on my part to get him to this point somehow. He was having to face what years of stress had done to me, mostly caused by him. What was wrong with that? I had done what I set out to do, found a way to force him to some accountability.<br />
Dr. Davis did not even know about the molesting yet, but I planned to tell him as soon as I got the chance. That is what I thought I could do in a psych ward. I could take advantage of the protection afforded me in there by walls and locked doors and could tell secrets and reveal being the victim of sexual crimes I had not dared to talk about before. Daddy had always screamed and shouted when anybody got too close to a subject he did not want talked about. He had seen his dad do the same thing for years. <br />
My hot tempered Grandfather Wilson terrorized the whole family into saying absolutely nothing to him about his womanizing. Men who caused big problems in their families acted like this. But electric shock treatment was going to be a big distraction for me and possibly very dangerous.<br />
I went to my appointment with Dr. Branch that afternoon and talked as fast as I could for 20 minutes presenting my case against having electric shock. Dr. Branch did not say anything. He asked a question or two and dismissed me. <br />
The morning of the fifth day Dr. Davis came in to talk to me around 9:o'clock. He said that Dr. Branch had still not gotten back to him yet. I knew that meant that I should continue to prepare for a series of shock treatments. The longer Dr. Branch went without communicating to Dr. Davis that he would not order shock treatment the more chance I thought there was that he was going to prescribe it for me.<br />
Why? How much more articulate could I be when given the chance to say why I objected to it. But I was pretty sure that Dr. Branch looked at it as though I questioned, a mere girl of 20, the whole idea of shock treatment. This of course was before drug therapy was developed. At that time, electric shock was the generally prescribed treatment and is still used. Everybody on that ward was getting shock treatment or were being transferred to the state mental hospital and would receive shock treatment there. I thought it was just assumed, even from the fact I had been committed, that I was deemed mentally ill enough to require shock treatment. <br />
The cheekiness of objecting to shock treatment was going to irritate Dr. Branch, of course. But this was enforced treatment which went against my grain, especially after all the effort I had been making to assert myself with my own thinking. I did not think I needed electric shock treatment. I thought it might be very dangerous for me. So why did I have to have it? I could have asked that all day. I did not think I fit the criteria of being mentally ill. I was not helpless. What more could I do to deal with problems I had been faced with since birth into a very troubled family. How much better could I cope? <br />
I went into the day room and was sitting there around 11:30 a.m. That is when I started thinking about how to stop Dr. Branch from prescribing shock treatment for me some other way. I simply could not wait until he had given the order and attendants came to get me. It would be too late to stop them.<br />
I had to keep control of the situation at all costs. How could I do it? It occurred to me that I could go on strike, I could not take a deeper breath until he agreed to let me leave this hospital without electric shock therapy. I no sooner thought this than I could feel my body lock up with the simple effort of not taking a deeper breath. It was going to hurt, but a voice manifested within me, which seemed to be like a guide's that activated as soon as there was a life or death crisis. The voice said that there was always a slim chance that electric shock would kill me instantly. Or if it did not kill me could do considerable damage to me. The voice went on to say that if I kept my dying in my own hands I might be able to come back with less damage, that I could do it, I had been exerting my will for months. Now was not the time to relinquish control to them. <br />
<br />
So just like that, my body movement froze and I started dying. I do not think this could ever have happened if I had not had that earlier frightening bout with severe fatigue years before. Severe fatigue was what was affecting me now making this solution seem like the only option I had left to stop the treatments. I was being guided to do this to save my own life. But most people survived shock, another part of me reasoned. The guide voice said, but for you this is punishment for trying to speak out in a long series of similar punishments that have silenced you for years. You do not see electric shock as something that will help you get well. You see it as a means of torture to subdue an uppity young female who is trying to assert herself in a man's world. That is why it is so dangerous for you. You have taken enough punishment for trying to speak out. You cannot take a lot more. You have reached the breaking point.<br />
I realized that we can die when we decide it might be time. If I had to die I was going to be in charge, not them. I was not going to be dragged kicking and screaming to my death. I was going to choose death when I had no other choice left. <br />
By this time my fixed position and some saliva that was now running down my chin had attracted the attention of attendants. They called for assistance and half dragged me to my room. They laid me on the bed with my eyes still open and fixed, half conscious. I could see and hear everything, I was just locked into one position and could not speak.<br />
I thought of how upset Dr. Davis would be to see me like this after the intense talk we had had a couple of nights ago. I was never conscious of him in the room, even though he was called. I could only see the wall of my bedroom the way my body was positioned. So I would not have known he was there if he observed me silently from my off side. <br />
I knew that Dr. Davis could not get me out of this fixed position and now dying and neither could Dr. Branch. It was too late. I was going to have to spend a long afternoon of dying to convince them they had to give up the idea of shock treatment.<br />
Dying was painful, but I was so convinced that in the end it would save me I was able to endure it. I didn't know how long I was going to have to die, but I would just have to endure it as long as I could. I could not stop what I was doing either. This was what dying was all about.<br />
I had reached the breaking point. I was dying because I could no longer live with all this happening to me. There had been all kinds of warnings. Don't get fatigued past this point. You must rest. You must not get too stressed.<br />
I thought my nervous system had been damaged from years of crisis. I had barely been able to stave off a crisis when I was twelve. Another week or two of work and stress would probably have caused my collapse. So now my strength had been exhausted again. I had come to end of my strength to fight a conscious battle and had frozen up. I would just have to wait and see if I could survive this. And going to this extreme was bound to cause some permanent damage. Once a nurse came and lifted up my eyelid and said to someone else,"She has been like this all afternoon." <br />
Gradually over the afternoon my sight began to fade. Darkness was coming on. I was not able to see any more. Approximately four hours after I began to freeze up, another change in my physical condition occurred. Some loud involuntary sounds emitted from deep in my throat that brought nurses and attendants running.<br />
They hovered over me asking me if I was having a nightmare. No, it was not me who had voluntarily made those noises. I realized when they all left it had been my body in the last few moments of breathing. After the sounds stopped, my breathing stopped. I had never taken a deeper breath all afternoon. I could not. <br />
I could tell none of the people who had responded to the noises had ever seen a mental patient in this kind of crisis because they did not take my vital signs, and left with no idea that I had ceased to breathe. They thought I was having a normal nightmare!<br />
From what I could gather later Dr. Branch had told Dr. Davis I was having a catatonic seizure and just to leave me alone. Which was why no doubt my vital signs were not taken. Dr. Branch never appeared on the ward to my knowledge after I seized up.<br />
I could feel my heart straining from lack of oxygen. It felt like it was soon going to break.<br />
And then I simply could not do this anymore. As my strength to keep on living had failed, my strength to keep on dying failed. I was able to take up the idea of living again. I was no longer unable to do anything but die. I could start living again because I had done all I could do. If they gave me electric shock now they would know beyond a shadow of a doubt it could kill me. <br />
I sat up and when the nurse came in, she said, "Oh, you are awake now." And a little later on she bought me some dinner and I ate some of it. <br />
I asked if Dr. Davis had gone home. The nurse told me that yes, she believed he had, but she said, "He sat by your bedside for two hours. He will be back in the morning. But I am going to call and tell him that you are up and eating. He wanted to know if there was any change in your condition." <br />
<br />Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-47296551109282896392011-08-12T13:43:00.000-07:002013-12-06T11:37:01.604-08:00Memoir: Chapter 49: Finding a doctor I could trust on the psych wardI tried not to panic about being committed to a psych ward. The armed officer told me that I had the right to make one phone call before we left the university. The only one I considered calling was my Grandfather Wilson, but since he knew so little about me from not ever having having had a meaningful conversation with me, I knew he just would not understand why this was happening, and would likely be a bigger distraction than help. So I turned down the opportunity, and we traveled to the Salt Lake County Hospital in silence.<br />
It seemed that this was the teaching hospital for the University of Utah medical school. I did not know it at the time but I was now under the jurisdiction of Dr. Branch, head of the psychiatry department in the medical school at the University. I did not see Dr. Andersen, who had committed me, for ten days. I figured he anticipated that I would not be happy with being committed in the shockingly short time he did it, so avoided me. <br />
And my dad thought I could teach school in Utah schools with no problem! I had only begun to go another route to try to surface the molesting I had endured in childhood a relatively short time and here I was on my way to a psych ward because of my unusual and disturbed behavior, I took it. Even I was in quite a state of shock over this totally unexpected development. Dr. Lees had had the capacity to ignore for two years what I thought was a distinctive cry for help in a paper I had written. This had lulled me into thinking that it would not matter what I did no one would respond. So I was going to have to get used to Dr. Andersen, the university psychiatrist, overreacting.<br />
I found out by asking around later that Dr. Andersen was a Mormon psychiatrist, so I figured he had a gut reaction to a female student challenging him right off with silence to one of his questions. Well, not just one question actually, but three!<br />
My reason for doing this was because I felt I had not been able to engage his whole attention from the beginning. Like many men, and Mormon men of authority in particular, he just was not used to focusing intense attention on a female, except for sexual reasons, I did not think, as though what she was in his office for and was going to tell him was not likely to be important. Since I now felt that I had committed myself to leaving the University and knew that all hell was going to break loose when my father heard about it, his relatively offhand manner annoyed me almost at once.<br />
I was tired of being ordered around by men and having no choice in the matter. Now that I no longer had to worry about staying in good standing at the university by not creating any problems for anybody, I figured I could risk more with this psychiatrist.<br />
My reasoning was what could he do to me in such a short time. I planned to resume talking after three questions, having perhaps shocked him into more intensity, and we could maybe have a chat that would mean something before I left the university forever.<br />
In fact, if he had been one minute later in returning to the office, I would have been gone, unless he had stationed someone outside to make sure I didn't leave. Of course, in his mindset, he might have sent out search parties to apprehend me had I somehow gotten away from him. <br />
So now that he had deemed me disturbed enough to commit to a mental ward, what now? The armed officer left me at the desk of the locked ward to be admitted and left. My glasses were requested from me, which I did not like because I was extremely near sighted, but I was told that this was just a precaution and as soon as my doctor gave permission they would be returned to me. <br />
Okay, I would have to comply with the rules. I was shown a room where I would be sleeping and introduced to a woman who was already assigned to the only other bed in the room. She was so emaciated, I was alarmed but she explained to me after the nurse left that she really wasn't a 'nut case' but had transferred here from the cancer ward. She said she was dying and she wanted someone to talk to her before her demise, but nobody on this ward had time to talk to anyone. All they wanted to do was electric shock people she said and fortunately she couldn't have electric shock because she was dying. They seemed to have no idea how talking could satisfy her. She was surprised and very disappointed. This was not what she expected to find on a ward for the mentally ill. <br />
I did not like the sounds of that at all, and decided I had better talk to someone in authority about shock treatment as soon as possible. Thelma, a woman I judged to be in her fifties, got her emaciated self up off the bed with great effort and dragged herself slowly out of the room in search again for someone to talk to her. She seemed very determined she was not going to give up, she was going to make someone say something significant to her before she died.<br />
I would have made time for her, but she like me was hunting someone in authority, and she apparently judged me to be too young to know what to say to her about the big change she was facing. I didn't know if she could find anyone here who was an authority on death, but I thought they should at least make the effort to grant her dying request. Wasn't it their proclaimed job to help the mentally disturbed? I was sure she was after the same thing I was, some attention that was intense enough to make a difference. <br />
After she left I went out in the day room where a very young woman was causing a ruckus. She was lying in front of the locked door wailing that she did not belong here, she was not crazy. She was praying for Clark Gable to come and rescue her. I assumed her God of choice, Clark Gable, was one of the eccentricities that had landed her here, but I noted that it might be wiser not to panic and show fear as she was doing. We were probably close to the same age, but I couldn't imagine losing control of myself as she was doing. I was anything but not controlled. In fact, I had been calculating the effects of everything I said to anybody for months, practically down to the last word. <br />
While I was sitting there an older doctor, I would say in his fifties, introduced himself as Dr. Bliss and said that he had been assigned to ask me questions about why I had been committed. Oh, this was what I had been waiting for. I started to describe to him my interview with Dr. Andersen and what I had done and how Dr. Andersen responded. I could see almost at once that it was going to be very hard to impress Dr. Bliss, who I found out later was probably the most prominent and well known psychiatrist in the city with a big private practice, and Mormon, of course.<br />
It soon occurred to me that I might have to act the same way with him as I had acted with Dr. Andersen if he continued to act too damned unimpressed in order for him to get the complete picture of why I was in here. He had a built in attitude toward women that was beginning to offend me. I was soon sure this man was not going to be able to help me, that in fact, that it was dangerous for me to continue to give into him a minute longer. I would lose more stature even to myself by the second if I did. I forced myself to go silent, keeping my eyes fixed on him, to see how he took it. He immediately conveyed to me by turning away that he was a very busy man who did not have time to waste trying to fathom what some patient was trying to get across to him with a sudden silence. He just folded his notes and left with no further ado.<br />
I thought well, good. They would have to find somebody else to talk to me, as I could never have gotten this man to understand why I had done what I did in a million years. His complete attention was not to be had. At that moment I might have been just a random student charity case to him on my way to shock treatment. He surely did not need me as a patient if I was going to give him static. <br />
It finally really came home to me that shock treatment did not require talking to the patient. The treatment was what restored the patient to sanity and therefore normalcy. How did it do that? Could it be because it was viewed by the mind under siege as torture, and naturally the message to the patient would be to get the hell out of this place as fast as you can. Start doing what you used to do when you were considered sane. Stop rebelling. Stop making demands. Be sensible. Above all, cut the drama.<br />
Shock treatment started to seem to me like a pet alligator that was kept on site despite being very dangerous. The pet alligator was probably to blame for the disturbed male patient who kept me awake that night bellowing from across the receiving room from the male ward. He bellowed for hours. How anybody got any sleep around there I did not know.<br />
People were also in and out administering shots for pain to Thelma, the cancer patient. During the night she moaned that she just as well go back to the cancer ward because nobody was talking to her in here. I thought good luck, lady, all these people are not in practice, because they don't really have to talk to anyone. Shock treatment does the job. You said it yourself. This mental ward is not about talking to people. It is about administering shock treatment and restoring patients to normalcy the fastest and cheapest way possible. <br />
From then on a whole phalanx of students and one resident came to talk to me. I did not know why they thought it was important that anyone keep talking to me, but I suspected that they thought it would keep me preoccupied until I got used to the idea of shock treatment.<br />
One student even came to try to engage me in an exchange of words I had dated the year before who pretended not to recognize me. In fact, it is very possible he had not paid enough attention to me to recognize me under these circumstances even though he had spent the evening with me. I was not able to be polite to him very long. I wasn't here to help self centered students like him feel good about becoming doctors. God help the patients, if this one ever became a psychiatrist I thought. Oddly no women at all were ever sent to try to interview me. <br />
I thought I was going to be able to get along with an Oriental intern or possibly resident, but after talking to him a couple of times we suddenly reached an impasse, and I was forced to go silent. He simply could not stay interested, although he might have thought it was the other way around after I went silent with him, too.<br />
<br />
I thought the fuss they were making over Thelma in the middle of the second night was because she demanded to be taken back to the cancer ward. Instead I found out she actually died, and that was why her bed was empty the next morning. I was a little bit shaken by how fast she went. She really had meant that she was dying, and people had better talk to her before it was forever too late. <br />
That same day another woman who seemed to be in one of the worst rages I had ever seen was assigned to the empty bed in my room. She was seething all the while the nurses were getting her settled. She told them that she would have killed the bitch if she had not decided to come and commit herself. <br />
I took it that the bitch was a younger woman who had flirted with her husband, slept with him, something, but she kept saying she had committed herself to keep from committing murder. While she was grinding her teeth, a tall man in a white coat came in and said to me that he had been assigned to my case. He was an intern he informed me who was on a months' rotation to this ward. He got so rattled while he was talking to me, he dropped the glass syringe he was carrying with him to take blood he said from another patient. The syringe broke and he had to pick the pieces up. <br />
My new roommate was eying him and me balefully. I was a little bit horrified to realize after he left that she had started to confuse us with her husband and his younger girlfriend. I hoped that this did not mean she would try to kill me later on. I was supposed to go talk to the Intern that evening around seven o'clock when he said he had some time to try to get into my case. <br />
My new roommate continued to make threats and send burning glances in my direction that I hoped did not mean my life was in danger. I had not imagined I might be attacked by a very dangerous mental patient because she was confusing me with a woman she wanted to kill. <br />
Around seven I went to talk to the new Intern who said I could call him Dr. Davis. He warned me that he was not even going to become a psychiatrist, but a doctor of Internal Medicine. He did not know very much about mental illness, but he had been told I was not responding well to anyone. So he asked me tell him why that was.<br />
Since he had been so forthcoming about himself, I asked him where he was from. He said, California, that he was the son of an architect but had decided to change the family profession and become a doctor instead. He was a war veteran, 30 years old. All this was good news, I thought, he was not a Mormon, maybe he could take a more objective view about women than they could, not having been influenced from birth by Prophets of God and their inherent attitudes toward women. <br />
He said he did not know much about Mormonism. He was so busy he did not have a lot of time to learn about it either. So what were my issues with Mormonism? <br />
I started telling him my story which he actually showed a great deal of interest in. I mean, I told him parts of my story, as much as I could in the time he allotted. He also mentioned he was married and his wife had been working to help put him through medical school, but I thought he was beginning to act more like a man on an interesting date with a new girl than a married Intern. He immediately caught himself and said that I reminded him of a girl he had met in Italy during the war. He said he had not met anybody like her ever again until now. <br />
I thought that it figured, since I had been at war since I was five years old with the molesters, at war with my alcoholic, suicidal but very domineering father, at war with professors and students who reminded me of my father, and had gone to war enough with a Mormon University psychiatrist to get committed to a mental ward.<br />
<br />
All this had taken place by the end of my third day in the psych ward. This business of getting a doctor to talk to me satisfactorily had been occupying my mind ever since I arrived, but now I seemed to be succeeding with Dr. Davis. I really did not think anybody else cared whether I formed what I considered a successful relationship with a doctor at all, because talking was not considered that important. They all seemed to be waiting for something else to take place in regard to my case, I was not quite sure what it was, but I suspected it was my own prescription for shock treatment. Dr. Davis assured me that he did not have the authority to prescribe for me. Dr. Branch was in charge of my case and he would do that. I had not even seen him. I wondered if Dr. Branch would actually prescribe shock treatment eventually without even seeing me! The thought was chilling. <br />
I went back to my room after two hours of satisfactory conversation with Dr. Davis, but my roommate was still awake still spitting fire. Now she seemed more jealous than ever. She seemed to think that I had been out all night having sex with her husband, and it sounded like she was planning to leap across the room and kill me before anybody could stop her. She was too enraged and too jealous even to stop herself she was saying. She said she did not want to do it, she knew the punishment would be severe but she couldn't help herself. The bitch was going to die!<br />
I was prepared to scream if she took one step but I did not know if they could get to me in time before she did something that was bound to be life threatening as she probably had the strength of a man eating tigress!<br />
Just as she appeared ready to spring at me with a final guttural snarl, she let out the most blood curdling scream I had ever heard in my life. Nor have I heard anything since that could be compared to it. Everybody in authority that was in running distance dropped everything and sprinted like mad to my room. <br />
My roommate lay back on the bed, gasping. What is wrong with you, they yelled. "I even scared myself!" was all she could utter in explanation.<br />
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But the ungodly scream must have vented enough of her mad rage that she turned over and went to sleep. But I could not sleep. I felt I was still in extreme danger from the pet alligator they kept on this ward, electric shock therapy. I had to escape that somehow before I dared to sleep. The pet alligator was a lot more dangerous to me, I knew instinctively, than the disturbed woman. Set loose on the hapless mental patients by too many doctors, the alligator's lust for victims probably could not be contained without a battle to the death. Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-8695332883073314322011-08-10T11:11:00.000-07:002013-12-06T06:09:58.741-08:00Memoir: Chapter 48: The die is castI thought I only had two classes that I thought were going to give me serious trouble, after I had been in school a couple of weeks and had time to see how my changed policy was going to go. Both were education classes, and it was easy to see how I might get into serious trouble with those. All my education classes had been dull and unsatisfying, but these two had problems that bordered on the extreme. One had the worst teacher I had ever encountered in college or high school. His lectures were so hard to sit through, that it finally occurred to me that this is was also what I needed to rebel against. What did I have to lose?<br />
I had tried to tell my dad every way possible that I had been shaped by the fierce and scarring fire of his upbringing. Because of that it was not going to be possible for me to teach unnoticed like his sister Nethella did. She went on year after year highly respected in every single position she held in the community, from teacher in Sunday school to elementary school to County Supervisor of education. I just as well get thrown out of college now because of my behavior in one of these education classes as get thrown out of a job later because I taught a class the way I thought it ought to be taught and alarmed the parents. <br />
Dull was safe. That is what happened when a state was dominated by religion. The Mormon Church still revered the prophet's teachings who had introduced polygamy as a divine revelation. Nothing had changed except the main stream Mormons had given up polygamy in order for Utah to enter the union without severe opposition and controversy. These dull classes were what the parents preferred to a teacher who might spout opinions they did not approve of. <br />
Utah Mormons were going to have their way in their own state, which is why educators, teachers, professors, everybody tended to conform to Mormon beliefs. Dynamic teaching that seemed the least bit critical was always going to be regarded with suspicion. Even other religions had never been tolerated to any degree. <br />
I was resisting this mold and was probably going to have to leave the state before I'd have any peace of mind. So I just as well get it over with. If I had to leave college my dad could not very well demand that I teach. I was going to hunt for some other job to earn money. I was sick of agonizing.<br />
As for the other education class, it was on how to teach English to high school students. The Dean of Women was in charge, and she was an unbelievably eccentric lady I thought would have been driven completely up the wall had she tried to teach in high school. In the first place she was obsessed by gum chewing. The second she spotted a student in her class chewing gum she would immediately stop and give a considerably lengthy lecture on the evils of having to teach in the face of disrespectful chompers of gum.<br />
I had not run into a teacher that hated gum chewing since grade school, but eventually all the students had found out about her obsession and everybody had quit chewing gum in class so she could settle down and teach what she was supposed to about how to engage high school students in English classes. So the first thing I did as soon as she stopped looking for jaws that were moving suspiciously was dispense with taking frantic notes like all the rest of the students were doing. I had always followed suit but now I figured if what she said didn't stick with me, it was not worth remembering, so I was the only one in class who was looking directly at her and carefully weighing whatever she said. <br />
At first I received A's on some of my assignments, but then she would let down on her intensity, and I would respond accordingly with papers she decided were D grade. Well, even I was somewhat disconcerted by the dizzying way I leaped from writing excellent papers to failing ones, but I was responding very honestly so I didn't protest any of her grades. <br />
At about that time a new factor entered into the proceedings. Lees called me to take a part in another play he was taking on the road. When I went to rehearsal and read the part he wanted me to play, I considered turning him down but didn't quite dare. I was to play the second female lead, a simple sweet innocent submissive Amish girl. I thought well if I wasn't getting the message here of how he preferred me to act, I would never get it. After three years interacting with him, starting on my fourth year, he had no concept that I was rebelling against being this kind of girl with all my might. <br />
In fact, I was at the very moment engaged in behavior that might cause me to be ridden out of college on a rail. But I planned not to do anything too drastic so I would be able to finish the run of the play at least. I rehearsed but the week before opening, I reached another crisis in the dull education class. I just decided not to take the mid term on which my grade would depend. We were only going to have two tests we were informed, a mid term and a final. I wasn't going to stay in college. I was going to leave because of this terrible class, if for no other reason. It was time!<br />
Poor Lees went on with his play, unknowing. I wondered when one of the teachers, either the idiot male teacher or the Dean of Women would report my conduct to somebody. I really thought it would be the Dean of Women who unexpectedly called me in a couple of days before the opening of the play in a town three hundred miles away fairly close to the canyon country where I had been raised. She said to me that she simply could not teach with me in the class just looking at her. She told me the amazing decision she had made that she would give me the credit for this class if I simply would not attend. <br />
I nodded, trying to take in the connotations of this unheard of concession. Remembering the other guy, I finally said, "Oh you don't have to do that, I am in trouble in my other class. I will be leaving college very soon." I was finished talking but before I left I decided I would just look at her directly in the eyes a second or two, something I had been trying lately, because I never expected to see her again. I wanted her to remember this moment. I felt because of how rattled she was I was looking into her soul, and then I got up and left and never went back. <br />
So now I had told her I was more or less through with college, how long would it be before Lees got this information filtered down to him? <br />
The opening of the play was routine on Friday night. Mormon audiences were of course pleased that there was nothing in this play from the University that might disturb. They seemed to applaud with guarded enthusiasm. The next day we all got in our caravan of cars and headed for another location. That night to my surprise, Robert, the sadistic professor I did not like, showed up at the play. Afterwards he and Lee acted gloriously happy. I thought this was curious. This was not a play that the sophisticated and intellectual Robert could possibly have liked. Somebody said Robert was on vacation, and he, and Lees, and several others of the merry band all went over to the motel where Lees were staying, but of course I was not invited to attend the party, and went to my own motel with some other players who were not invited to go to the party either and went to sleep. <br />
The next day on the way home, Lees demanded that the cast who were all riding in the van with him, do a line rehearsal. I hated Lee's line rehearsals. He did not want you to put any emotion in your lines, you just had to go through the play with as little feeling interjected as possible. Talk about a way to make being in a play dull! Lee's line rehearsal ruined my night. Why didn't he just leave us alone. I had too much I needed to think about that was worrying me.<br />
I woke up just as we started to climb up the University hill on the way to my room in the Phi Mu house. I became aware that my head was on the shoulder of some unknown male and he was holding my hand in the darkness with such warmth and passion I was surprised he had not progressed further into intimacy. Maybe because I was asleep. I did not even know who this was. I had not noticed the male sitting next to me. I glanced at him as I got out of the van and recognized him as a tech person. I needed to ask Marilyn about him! He was blond, quite handsome.<br />
So on Monday I finally found out who he was by asking Marilyn who confirmed he was a tech person, and he was also married. I had appreciated his genuine raw passion for me under the circumstances, but I was going to have to nip this delightful interest in me in the bud, if he was married. I was sure he would expect more of the same on the trips to the hinterlands to come, 300 miles from home.<br />
I also found out about a month later that people who were present to the line rehearsal that night said that right in the middle of it, I fell into a profound sleep. They tried in vain to wake me up to continue, but I did not respond. I was sure that this delightful act of rebellion was what inspired the passion in the guy sitting next to me. Nobody I had ever heard of would have dared fall asleep in one of Lees' line rehearsals. But it figures that I did it considering my state of mind, and didn't even know I had done it! <br />
I was busy thinking about him that Monday when I was notified Lees wanted to see me in his office. This was sometime toward noon. I was to see him at 2:30. I was thinking the Dean of Women must be the informant if I was in trouble. I doubted that the news of my missing a mid term could have traveled that far yet. <br />
Well, 2:30 came and went, and an hour later the secretary said that Lees must have had something come up, so he would have to see me the next day. We made another appointment for Tuesday.<br />
I slept well. The die was cast. In fact, I even felt fairly cheerful. All this agonizing I had been doing would soon be over.<br />
When I arrived to the appointment the next day, Lees was not in the office nor did he show up for close to another hour. I could not help but feel that he really did not want to do this, so when he came, he said without any fanfare, "So what are your troubles?"<br />
I just didn't answer him. I looked at him, but stayed silent, according to my new stronger way of asserting myself. So he didn't waste any more of his time. He said, "If you won't talk to me, will you see the school psychiatrist?"<br />
Well, this was an amazing new idea he was springing on me. Why hadn't he thought of that novel idea when I wrote the paper about the student covered with sores everybody just ignored. It was too late now. I was gone, although I would reassure him as soon as I had a chance that I would finish the run in the play. He didn't have to worry about that, if that was what was bothering him. <br />
I was thinking on the way over to the psychiatrist's office that I had never actually been to a psychiatrist before. I needed to experienced everything I possibly could before I left. He probably led a very dull life administering to all these conforming students. Maybe I could give him a refreshing bit of honesty before I departed, too. <br />
Dr. Andersen did look as though he had been bored for a month of Sundays when I met him. He started asking me a few routine questions as though my answers would not have mattered to him if I had been stark naked. I thought boy, he really needs to be brought back to life. So the next question he asked me I held his eyes and did not answer. It took quite a lot of nerve for me to do this to a psychiatrist, but I wanted him to remember this encounter. So I did it twice more.<br />
My theory is that Dr. Andersen fell madly in love with me on the spot and just could not let me get out of his office for fear I would be gone forever. He was right. I was well on my way to disappearing from the university. I was just going to wait until that damn play was over with.<br />
Dr. Andersen got up and abruptly left the room. I was confused. I had thought I had surely gotten his attention but maybe not. Maybe he was beyond hope. After I waited another half an hour for him to return I decided just to leave. This was insulting. Such a shocking lack of interest. Like Lees. What mundane business could possibly be occupying his mind elsewhere this long.<br />
I was just going out the door when Dr. Andersen confronted me. He said, "Geraldine, I think you should be admitted to a hospital." <br />
I immediately snapped back to what ever passed for the sane meet-the public state of mind I had been in before I started all this. <br />
"No, I don't think I need to go that far," I said, "I am acting in a play, you know, for Dr. Lees, the head of the theater department. I have to go to southern Utah this weekend. Maybe I can receive some therapy?"<br />
He said, "Geraldine, you are going to a hospital!" I saw the armed officer standing just outside the door for the first time. Dr. Andersen pointed to him and said, "I have arranged for this gentleman to take you there!" <br />
<br />Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-6480279572850389462011-08-08T14:44:00.000-07:002013-12-06T05:27:42.839-08:00Memoir: Chapter 47: Reasons for my madnessBefore starting back to school in the fall, I went over and over the reasons why I needed to carry out my plan of reacting with truth and honesty in all my classes my senior year in response to whatever assignment I was given. I was desperate. What was involved, I decided, had gotten too big and too complex for any one person to be expected to handle. I had tried talking to just about everybody and had gotten nowhere. The past 5 years I had lived in Salt Lake I had interacted with my Grandfather and Grandmother Wilson, especially the last year when Margie was in Salt Lake to go with me, and had encountered the same difficulties my mother complained about when she tried to talk about her troubles to them.<br />
Mother still didn't know everything about my dad that I knew, but there was a lot she did know. Now she had gotten involved with other men through contacts in her store, so had added another element of extreme danger to her volatile relationship with my father. She was far too engaged in battle with my suspicious dad and a cover-up of her own affairs for me to talk to her. <br />
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But I had seen evidence of my Grandmother's distrust of my Grandfather in her determination to act as his nurse when he was giving chiropractic treatments. My mother had often talked about her father's womanizing tendencies. I also found him to be defensive and guarded. I knew he had a bad temper, so I did not go far enough for him to get angry to shut me up. It just was not possible to get into any depth with him. I had to give that idea up before I made any progress, even though Margie said he was acting different with her now she was going to become a nurse. <br />
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I had gone down to the King ranch and had numerous conversations with my Aunt Nethella, who was now the female boss of the King ranch as much as the hired man allowed her to be. She had taught all three of of my younger sisters in the local elementary school before they started taking the bus to Escalante. She could talk for hours about the problems she incurred teaching all the kids, but her interests were still relatively limited. <br />
My Grandfather King died at the age of 87 when I was away to college in my sophomore year, but I had not talked to him at all for years except on cattle drives. He would always come to get some of us girls when the hired men were bringing the main herd up from the winter ranges in the big spring round-up. We would go down and drive the tired cattle home while the hired men came on ahead after days out on the range. He avoided any conversations except what had to do with the ranch work, even when he was up in his 80's. He was too old for anyone to challenge. <br />
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I would listen patiently to Aunt Nethella's analyses of how my sisters all did in school and I asked questions. But I never had enough of a breakthrough with her to talk about any of the ways males connected to the King ranch had impacted my life and well being. I thought I could have talked to her forever and gotten nowhere when it came to what the women did not know and the men were not about to tell them.<br />
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As far as I could see, the theater department as well as the English department at the University were where male students most apt to be gay were enrolled. I thought Lees probably had a good idea of who was gay and who was not. But this subject had long been so taboo that married playwright Oscar Wilde had been jailed in England for being too open about a homosexual affair. Homosexual activities were on the books as against the law then. The father of the young man he was 'befriending' charged him with the crime. Of course, Wilde's plays had been done at the University of Utah, one while I was there, but nobody talked about the homosexual problem in connection with a married Oscar Wilde, least of all not Lees.<br />
I thought society had made very little progress since Oscar Wilde's time. Gays were accepted who came out but mostly in the cities like New York, which had long been hospitable to them because of their talent. Gays who came out were still not accepted well in Utah so dominated was it by religion. I thought the more people were able to be honest about their homosexuality, the less problems there were going to be, resulting from secrecy and cover-up, which ended up with wives who were ignorant of their husband's bisexuality and children disturbed and victimized by the secrets and lies, as I had been after I became suspicious. <br />
I thought there was probably so much knowledge of the cover-up of homosexual tendencies among the married in the theater department that people had gotten used to devaluing honesty in any number of ways. Which was why I could probably cause quite a stir just trying to cut through all the fat that lies and cover-up engendered.<br />
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I talked about what I was planning to do enough that Margie became uncomfortable. She did not like the sounds of it. She said she did not understand my thinking. Was rebelling what I expected her to do? I told her I did not mean that she should do that now in her nursing classes. Maybe she would run into a problem later on in her training but had not gotten far enough along now to be concerned. <br />
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But I was a senior. I did not have a whole lot longer to act if I was going to accomplish anything important while in college. I had not told my sisters about the molesters because of their connection to my dad. I thought it was also possible my dad had molested the under aged at some point in his life, if he had gotten the opportunity.<br />
The molesting was the main reason I felt I had to keep on trying to reach somebody with authority. But since I could not burden Margie with explanations, it was no wonder she was uneasy. I tried not to say enough that she would become suspicious that I was concealing something from her, but to tell one of my sisters was to tell all, so I thought I had better anticipate the result. Margie especially would resist, because she always opposed what I thought, and would especially if she was upset by my conclusions. I was not ready for them to become that reactive. I had all the opposition I could handle as it was. They were victimized, too, by my dad's alcoholism and his subsequent violent conflicts with my mother, so they could not help me. I had to help them! <br />
I had not been able to protect any other underage victims of the second molester especially, but the almost universal cover-up of homosexual activities gave protection to bisexual men who turned molester. Oscar Wilde was reputed to like underage boys. I read this in one of the many bios written about him. The married French author, Andre Gide, went on vacations to foreign countries in search for underage boys, which he confessed in his journals I found in the University library. <br />
If women were kept in ignorance, they could not even protect their own sons. If I was able to surface my own experiences, I might convince wives and mothers to look for this kind of activity. <br />
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Dr. Lees had ignored my first attempt to get his attention about my problems when I wrote him the paper about the students covered with sores. Had he been the least bit inquisitive I could have opened up more, but he turned away instead. This suggested to me that he was probably covering up homosexual tendencies of his own and always feared a student might be coming dangerously close to bringing the subject up. He wasn't going to take a chance on that happening. I had been dealing with defensive evasive men all my life. I thought I knew the signs. <br />
So I needed to get more teachers besides him involved. I needed to get their attention, which I could do, I thought, if I insisted on more depth in all my classes by my honest response to the lack of it. Plenty of times in Utah schools I thought my classes were short of content I could respect, so I thought that I probably would not be satisfied long with any. <br />
I knew if a head of a department was covering up, the teachers would become careless and lazy and unfocused on what they needed to accomplish. If the head of their department did not require sharpness on their parts because it was threatening, the whole department was apt to suffer from a loss of integrity. <br />
Dr. Lees had been head of that department for a long time, and I thought I was running into his lack of standards.<br />
I suspected that he used his out of town theater productions to get away from home where he could more safely make connections. That was possibly why he directed these plays, even though he was the most prestigious director on campus and only had to direct the big productions if he chose. Lees directed those, too, but the out of town ones were what caught my attention when I got a part in one almost as soon as I enrolled in the university. <br />
These productions on the road reminded me of down 'below' to the cattle ranges which had been used for years by men like my father to have a safe, unobserved period of time with desirable male employees. School boys talked knowingly about "Down Below", suggesting that for unsuspecting boy victims along, this might be 'hell on earth' for them. It was one of the trips "Down Below" my cousin Ray was trying to avoid, but was forced to take when he was 14 years old. He acted very upset afterwards, but typically would not talk about it, but his tormenter on that trip was also my tormenter when he got any opportunity. So I had a good idea what had taken place. Some sort of violation of his person. <br />
I always refused to drive cattle anywhere, over night, even with my dad. As a girl, I could get away with refusing to go, but as a boy, he could not, so the boys were actually more at risk than the girls. <br />
There might be safety in numbers. I needed to alert more of my teachers and get them wondering why in the world I was acting like this, teachers that had not been involved in any cover-ups as well as some who might be. I did not see any other way now to get more supporters. <br />
My dad was too brutal, too ruthless when he felt threatened. He was too dangerous for me to accuse him of anything. I had already experienced a loss of physical strength coping with him when I was twelve. I had experienced too many crises under his jurisdiction for too many years. They had taken their toll of my health.<br />
No, I could not leave this university without allies. I needed protection when I did surface the truth. <br />
It was going to take strength to get past my dad's defenses to a place where he could not affect the outcome. So I was instinctively charting a path for one purpose, I had to be able to tell someone with authority about the molesters! I had never told anyone that I was molested, not even one person. And it looked as though I was going to have to go to extremes to be allowed to talk about what nobody want to hear. Only then could I go to the second part of the story, about what else some of these men were covering up which the women were too submissive and ignorant to detect.<br />
First these men were unfaithful to the women in a way they were not encouraged to think about, and then some targeted children for their fun. Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-36932208068778190092011-08-05T11:37:00.000-07:002013-12-05T13:26:56.650-08:00Memoir: Chapter 46: Last summer at home before implementing the policy of telling the truth in all my classes my senior year<div style="text-align: left;">
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I knew I had just one more year to make my mark in college and since this was not going to be possible with any significant acting roles or other achievements in my major I did not think, it was going to have to be accomplished in my classes. I had an increasing sense of strain about what this truth telling I was planning might involve.<br />
I thought I had barely escaped serious trouble when I started this policy in the third quarter of my junior year. If I had encountered any teacher but that particular one, I would probably have had to pay dearly for my honest but irreverent opinions about the high school text books I was assigned to review. <br />
I thought through once again what would happen if I just coasted on through as I knew I could easily do. I didn't have to rebel. I did not have to risk my degree by saying what I really thought in my classes, but it was just that not saying what I really thought would lead to no progress whatsoever in dealing with the criminal behaviors of my molesters or with what I thought was a major problem in Utah, men like my father behaving the way he did while believing he had covered the tracks of numerous affairs he had while partying with males and even working with them so his wife and daughters would not suspect.<br />
I just could not recover from the arrogance of him driving to Salt Lake, screaming like a maniac, accusing me of having sex with my Escalante boyfriend who I rarely saw and threatening to cut off my school funds entirely because of it. <br />
My sister LaRae had staged a mini-rebellion of her own, marching off to Salt Lake to work in a jam factory for the summer, so she could get away. I tried to talk her out of it, but she said she could not stand one more summer at home.<br />
My God, I thought, she had not been able to escape as I had at the age of 13. So she was willing to labor in a jam factory at the age of 15, the only job she could find at her age, for a break before she had to come back and finish high school in Escalante. <br />
I was troubled by her rebellion as I had not been able to establish a satisfactory relationship with LaRae during the busy summers when I was home. Now I was losing another summer without contact with her. I feared she would get into trouble, or her rebellion could lead to it, if she was not close to anybody in the family, intellectually. I questioned my younger sisters, Ann and Linda, trying to find out if she had been having bad clashes with our dad. They said no, she just didn't like working with him. She said he was too mean. She had been rebelling against 'boys' work for some time, so Ann and Linda were called upon to do most of it.<br />
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I actually had not minded working with Daddy in the summer, but I didn't have to put up with him the year around. I had even broached the idea to Mother and Dad of sending LaRae away to school in the city because she had proved to be an absolute whiz in her typing classes. I had an awkward two fingers that made typing difficult for me, but she was soon typing over a hundred words a minute with no problem. Daddy had a top future secretary in her, but she was also smart enough to be her own boss, start a business of her own, become a lawyer instead of working for one, any number of alternatives besides becoming some man's Girl Friday.<br />
Mother and Dad ignored my advice. That would cost money. Besides if it wasn't LaRae's idea it might not be safe to send her into the city as Mother and Dad were already having a tough time keeping track of her in Escalante. I thought they hardly had any influence over her, anyway, since she did not respect them. Who really could? <br />
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As for the University of Utah, I kept thinking about how Archie was celebrated when he made his appearance. At last, my theater professors could show real enthusiasm for a student actor who was not a returned veteran, but an attractive, talented, impertinent kind of guy, made even more affecting by serious health issues. If their marked enthusiasm for a student like Archie had not convinced the girls that they had no real place in the theater world I don't know what could. The girls didn't even have to be talented to play their parts. But it was better if they were really pretty.<br />
A female bookworm? Who needed one of those. Utah was not a book reading society. The church provided. Voracious book readers like me risked being treated as though we were poor unfortunate nerds with nothing else going for us. But I would say I was practically one of a kind, so it was not really necessary to discourage book reading. Girls were still proud they preferred to sew. <br />
Ambitious females seemed to elicit little more than a sense of unease. I had taken Robert's first play writing class as a junior and he was not impressed with anything I wrote. I was just so clearly the wrong sex He was markedly conflicted, hostile, or indifferent in his general attitude toward female students.<br />
Both Sharon and I had failed to hold Ghiselin's attention. Sharon finally gave up trying to get any respect for her poems, which she had been writing half her life. I had hoped to write some short stories for his class and for the school literary magazine that would illuminate what it had been like to be the daughter of a troubled and conflicted man. I thought I could have impacted the college literary scene just as Laurence had, if Ghiselin had been the least bit receptive. <br />
As it was, the student literary magazine was completely dominated by male writers. If there had been another notable female writing talent Sharon would have found her and formed a coalition if at all possible. Nobody with writing talent ever escaped her eagle eye.<br />
In the theater department, while riding the bus out to my aunt's house, I had become closer friends to Marilyn, my best friend in the theater department, who lived along that route. She was the daughter of a doctor, and several times she invited me to get off the bus and have a cool drink to her house where we proceeded to have somewhat crippled discussions about theater.<br />
Marilyn had gone to school with June, another theater major our age, for years. We were the young girls amidst the returning veterans, probably seeming like still children to them. June was a very bright young Mormon theater major. She had been raised, Marilyn told me, in a very religious home, one of the youngest of a large family. She just could not help being as totally nice, committed, and thoroughly admirable as she was. I naturally did not know June as well as I did Marilyn, because she was kept so busy with church, family, and her studies she had no idle time for talking. She was already planning to go to BYU, the church university, to get her masters degree in theater. <br />
H.E.D. Redford was still tearing up the theater department with his acting genius, but he would probably be gone when I returned. He was a veteran almost ten years older than the three of us. H.E.D. marched entirely to his own drummer, so he was not susceptible to the favoritism bestowed on Archie that caused us all jealousy. Archie just had to bat his incredibly long eyelashes, it seemed, and another plum role was his. Not that he could not act. But I did not think he was nearly the thinking actor that H.E.D., the older veteran, clearly was. <br />
Marilyn was an attractive girl and quite observant, but I thought she reflected the rather undeveloped personality of her mother, who seemed to have spent her life just being there but without meaningful work. She kept house and took care of the two children, Marilyn and her brother, so the doctor did not have to worry about anything when he was gone long hours from home. I thought Marilyn was trying to make more of an impact on the world than her mother, but she did not try to act. She wasn't going to teach. She didn't aspire to write. I was not quite sure what she did intend to do with her degree in theater. <br />
But she was interested in everything I was doing. She was of such a conventional mind set, I could not tell her very much at all about the quandary I was in about how to be more effective in reacting to my father and other men like him I had met at the University of Utah on the teaching staff. The professors didn't drink and carry on as my did did, but I did not think some of them were being honest with their wives. Their dishonesty could not help but affect their students.<br />
The cover-up of male interest in other males was I was discovering wide spread. I only knew one student who had come out as gay in college. The rest all gave the distinct impression that marrying some unfortunate girl was an option.<br />
Gail was a cheeky defiant young modern poet, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in declaring he was gay and shocking people, but I was sure he was going to pay a price for his dreadful decadence. At that time in Utah, a bold guy like him would have been deemed a very pernicious influence on the young.<br />
Well, what message did people imagine a cover-up of such traits would send, once detected. I had detected my dad's tendencies when I was only five. Was that all my extraordinary powers of observation were going to merit me, a stubborn wall of silence and denial among the males? I did in fact think that homosexuality was widely accepted in my dad's world as something to experiment with. No problem with the women finding out and voicing any objections, generally speaking. They were too ignorant. Too unsure of themselves when it came to these practices ever to accuse a man of unmentionable acts!<br />
No wonder many men did not find women to be challenging enough to satisfy. The young male who knew all his secrets might be the one who seemed more his match. We young girls in Utah were growing up in the dark ages of female development. We had not really advanced much further than Shakespeare's time. No wonder Shakespeare was so popular in Utah! <br />
Until my mother could figure out my dad, he was going to thwart and frustrate her. In fact, she acted like she hated his guts but had no alternative but to live with the bastard until the kids were grown. So far he had not killed her when he suspected that she was straying! So far so good! <br />
The male students at the University, normal or not, accepted favoritism as their just due, while the females did not rebel, they never rebelled. That was generally a good Mormon girl's main characteristic. She did not question male authority. My mother was an exception. She had rebelled against being a good Mormon girl even by marrying a skeptic like my dad. But I did not want to follow her example, because she was resigned to being bad. She did not seem to think she had any other choice, if she was not going to be thoroughly dominated by my dad.<br />
I knew how confused my mother's thinking was. A couple of years later I finally dared to voice a protest to her about her affairs with other married man while still married. She drew back her fist as though she was going to hit me in the face full force, then instead began jumping up and down and screaming, "I want to be bad, I want to be bad!" I knew she was dangerous at that moment, so I shut up. Taking Gary, my first child with me, who was still a baby in arms, I walked in the fields all day, thinking my mother was clearly insane. But so was my dad! Great! <br />
The church dominated society in Utah, which my mother tried to escape by marriage to my dad, was a patriarchal one. Men knew best. They were the only ones who could hold the priesthood. God had invested his authority in them. Women supported them, bore the children, and were generally expected to be meek and submissive. They did not do the important thinking, and so therefore they were incapable of doing important writing. This was my grandmother's attitude, on my mother's side. My mother rebelled because she had come to hate her mother's submissiveness to her dominating husband, my grandfather, so was not an ally to her daughter in her conflicts with him. <br />
I thought this was the message I was getting at the University of Utah as well as at home from my dad. There was no sense of a girl trying to become an important writer. Especially of the world. <br />
Yet, in my family there were no sons, so out of necessity we daughters had had to take on boys' work whenever it was physically possible. My younger sisters were now expected to punch cattle, scatter hay, ride horses, and drive trucks. Mother was as good a driver now as Daddy was, and often did the driving because Daddy was apt to get drunk. She had also become a Case Farm machinery dealer and would go down in the fields with her book of instructions to help the ranchers fix the machinery they bought from her.<br />
The only paying jobs Daddy could think of that educated women were good for were secretarial work and teaching school. The idea of a woman becoming a playwright was so far fetched I had not even bothered to mention this goal to him. Where was I going to do that?<br />
Well, the truth of the matter was that woman playwrights rarely made it to the top anywhere. If I ever wrote plays I was going to have to break into a field that was easily dominated by males, whether in Utah or New York.<br />
I really felt discouraged about where I was headed in the job market as a female. I still thought I would get into almost instant trouble if I tried to teach in Utah schools. Why I could probably go back to the University of Utah this coming fall and get into almost instant trouble by trying to say what I thought in my classes. What kind of crazy idea was that? What did what I thought have to do with anything important? As a matter of fact, I might not even be able to graduate if I continued to assert myself.<br />
If I did try to surface the secrets I had been keeping and was punished by having to leave the University without a degree, how would my dad react? <br />
I figured he might threaten me with extreme violence, but it was hard to imagine how he could top the fit he had thrown over me possibly having sex with my boyfriend. Someone might have to step in to protect me. I might have to run away. I would probably need to get entirely out of Utah. I could go to Spokane to visit Dean, maybe. Rent a room and try to find a job. I could tell Dean that we would probably have to get married, or I would just have to leave there, too, as my dad would not allow us to have sex without benefit of marriage.<br />
Dean was still acting as though he could go on forever writing to me and seeing me once in a while. I needed for that all to end. I needed to give him an ultimatum! A commitment to me or an end to this dabbling with my sexual feelings through the mail! <br />
Dean was writing that summer he did not think he could get a leave to come home now until Christmas or even later. This was ridiculous. I could not continue to be emotionally and sexually tied to a young guy I never saw. This situation was going to have to be resolved one way or another.<br />
So my fevered thoughts ran as I was bottling away as we had to do every summer, no matter what went down. LaRae came home, tired from her long hot summer bottling in the jam factory in Salt Lake. We made a few jokes about her wonderful job in the city bottling jam. Gee, she must have learned a lot. And it was so different.<br />
She just ignored us, and said what is more she planned to escape her dreary home every summer. When she was sixteen she would go back to Salt Lake to work as a waitress and would make a lot more money. We would think make fun when she was rich from all her labors.<br />
But if I rebelled too vigorously and did not get my degree, who knew, I might be trying to find work as a waitress or a store clerk before long, too. <br />
Oh now I was really looking forward to going back to the University that fall, about like I would have looked forward to a trial where it would be decided whether I lived or died. <br />
But by now I was committed. I was definitely going to rebel. I was going to speak the truth in my classes as it had rarely been spoken by a student in a Utah university. Oh, rebel boys did it after a fashion, and got thrown out, usually for substance abuse, absenteeism, and bad grades, but Daddy was used to well behaved daughters. He would have been very upset had we become little drunkards. This privilege in our family was reserved for him alone.<br />
Well, he was just about to find out what it was like to have a rebel daughter. Good luck to him, and to me. We were both going to need it. A dangerous plan to respond with my real thinking which previously had to be concealed was just about to be implemented into my daily rounds of senior college classes. Fall quarter. I could not put off this move any longer.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-50496882106079989882011-08-04T17:35:00.000-07:002013-12-04T09:42:31.457-08:00Memoir: Chapter 45: Starting to feel pressure building in my Junior year and wondering if I am not headed for another frightening bout of chronic fatigueI had been trying to keep the fatigue symptoms at bay ever since the frightening episode I experienced the summer I was twelve. I was beginning to wonder if I could manage all the requirements of a theater major without bringing on another bout. I knew I had managed my recovery only by resting enough and avoiding stress. More crises during my junior year began to worry me. <br />
The first upset happened after Christmas when Margie and I returned from our trip home for the holidays. Dean had come from Spokane, Washington on a Christmas furlough. He had been assigned to the base there for what he thought would be the duration of his enlistment. He had learned sheet metal work in Los Angeles and said this was where they repaired airplanes. He would not be sent to Korea he was told.<br />
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I was happy because I had gotten to wear my new black velvet sheath to one of the dances we attended together. Dean and I continued to correspond and because Pole was also still dating Margie, I thought we were pretty much set as couples, even though Margie wanted to be able to date others now that she was in college.<br />
I said I was certainly looking around, too, as I didn't see how Dean and I could ever go together with him stationed in Spokane and me in Salt Lake. After I graduated I would be expected to find a teaching job somewhere in Utah. It looked as though I would have to marry the guy even to stay long enough in the same place with him to say I actually knew him.<br />
Margie had a bigger opportunity to get acquainted with Pole going to the same high school, but even though she said her interest was waning in him, she still could not resist double dating with Pole, Dean, and me when we were home, we always had so much fun.<br />
By this time I had heard them sing and I was shocked at what a unique voice Dean had. Haunting. He could sing harmony with anybody. Pole's voice was good, too, but I could see why Dean had been called 'the voice' in high school. I thought he had good enough voice to make some kind of name for himself, but I thought he was too much the country bumpkin to do it.<br />
In the first place you had to coax him every time to sing. To heck with that. I entertained thoughts of becoming his manager if I ever did marry him. I did have to consider marrying him because we were so physically attracted, but there was something about his attitude that bothered me. <br />
He seemed to have some kind of idea that sex was just wrong. So I didn't think he showed enough determination to take these feelings anywhere. I would have had to resist, just because if I did get pregnant I would have to take a slow boat to China.<br />
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The way Mother and Dad acted when they found Pole's wallet after the holidays and looked in it convinced me once again that I had better never get pregnant while unmarried. Pole worked for Daddy off and on and sometime in January, Mother found his wallet in the couch. Mother looked in it and found a condom and immediately told Daddy. <br />
The first I heard about it was when Margie called me on the phone saying she had been fighting with them ever since they arrived in Salt Lake. It seems that as soon as they found the condom they jumped in a car and drove to Salt Lake as though they might not arrive in time before one of us got pregnant. They accused us of having sex with Pole and Dean, and what is more Daddy shouted he was going to stop paying any more of our college expenses. If those boys wanted to have sex with us they could just damn well pay our bills!<br />
I was so indignant to think Daddy especially would take this attitude, and even more so since I had so carefully refrained from taking any chances and they were as good as calling us damned liars. We were finally able to convince them that they had not used any condoms on us enough so they could go back home and quit harassing us. <br />
Of course, when Dean heard this bit of news I was sure that he would regard sex with an unmarried girl as even more of an evil act. I was just so tired of Daddy being such a tyrant, considering what I thought he had been doing all his life when it came to sex. Mother, too, although I doubted if she would have acted nearly so abusive, if it had been up to her. <br />
For this reason I was so happy when a handsome returned missionary fell in love with me. His name was Robert. It was during the same year that Archie, another returned missionary, put in his appearance at the University and became a superstar almost over night. Archie's eyelashes, so long and beautiful, were what had obviously caused him all his trouble. He had probably been madly pursued by both sexes since he was a tiny child because of those eyes. He did admit to having issues on his mission, but the way Lees and Robert, his protege professor, went crazy over him was a dead giveaway. Archie also informed us that he only had one lung and he was expecting the other one to go after a few years and he would be gone from this earth. <br />
I thought the professors were going to kill him that year giving him so many wonderful parts. But Archie seemed determined to live out his last days with maximum exposure so he did not turn down anything. And all of us theater majors who had been trying to get big parts on the main stage were jealous of him, which Archie anticipated. He was prepared with little barbs about our acting abilities in his own defense. <br />
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My returned missionary named Robert happened to run into me coming down the corridor in Kingsbury Hall where the students rehearsed their productions. He stared into my eyes, so I stared back. Rapport was instantly established without a word being spoken. He said, 'Will you go out with me?" I said, "Yes,' and that night he told me he had never had such an intense experience, meeting a girl for the first time, would I accept his fraternity pin, he wanted to take me home to meet his family.<br />
I then happened to remember there was a Dean out there somewhere who was never totally shocked at how my mother and dad acted since he had been observing such people all his life. He had gone through the same schools and even had some of the same teachers as Daddy did. His father was just as bad an alcoholic as Daddy was. <br />
I knew I could not take Robert, the missionary, home to meet my mother and dad. He played the violin. He had served his mission without excessive conflict it appeared. What was I? He had no idea. We had just met one night in the corridor and felt an instant marvelous attraction, but I had to tell him I already had another boyfriend.<br />
He probably suspected he had gotten carried away, so he did not argue with me. He was smart enough to trust me on this. It turned out that he had only been checking out the University and decided against going there. I never saw him again. <br />
Later on during the year Daddy did something else Margie and I could tell Pole and Dean about, but I could never have told Robert. He came to Salt Lake to get a truckload of something or other and got totally whacked out on something and was picked up and jailed. Mother called Margie and asked her if she please would not pick him up from jail and drive him and his loaded truck home, as she did not know how else to get them there. She told her to ask me to come with her to handle Daddy. She told Margie to drive very carefully because the truck was probably overloaded. <br />
I said I would go, of course, as this was something Margie could not do alone. When she picked me up in the truck with Daddy he was still so out of it, he was not making a lot of sense. I could not smell liquor on him so gathered it was some potent pills he had purchased somewhere. I got between them and off down the road we went. <br />
Margie had not had a whole lot of experience driving the big truck, but she had been driving with great enthusiasm since she was 15, so pretty soon she was handling the truck I thought perfectly well. Every once in a while Daddy would demand we stop so he could relieve himself, and I could see he was taking more pills. He probably would not stop dosing himself until they were entirely gone. <br />
For this reason he did not even realize there was a crisis at all. He did not wake up. We were going up the summit of the Escalante Mountain when on the steepest part, the truck went out of gear. My heart leaped. My God, what was going to happen now. A runaway over loaded truck? But Margie instantly struggled with those gears like a professional, and to my surprise she managed to get the truck back into compound. <br />
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We were totally exhausted by the time we met Mother on the road to Escalante. Margie got out and went up to her and I could see she was crying. I started crying, too, when I realized how horribly stressed and strained Margie must have gotten on the summit of that mountain. It was almost a matter of life or death whether she got the truck back in gear. <br />
Otherwise the brakes might not have held and we could have had a bad wreck any number of ways. She knew what a close call we had.<br />
Mother drove us back to Salt Lake the next day so we could get on with our studies. <br />
I am sure one of the reasons Margie went on talking to and dating Pole from time to time was because he had worked for Daddy. She did not have to explain to Pole what Daddy was like. Pole knew what he was like.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-7194306406769581622011-08-03T13:55:00.000-07:002013-12-04T08:43:46.737-08:00Memoir: Chapter 44: In demand for student plays if not for the main stageI hoped that I would be able to help Margie more during her first year at the U of U if I lived with her than I had been able to help Connie, my friend from Escalante, the year before. She had elected to try a year at the university and secured a room at the freshman dorm. I had thought she would benefit from living there as there would be many girls she could interact with and might enjoy herself more. I was too busy to be able to see her often as I was in demand for student productions. The theater majors were always looking for actors, and since I memorized fast and well I got cast.<br />
I went over a few times to help Connie with some of her English papers, but she became increasingly frustrated with the difficulty she experienced in some of her classes and began to wish she had done something else with the money her Uncle Hymie had left for her to attend college. We always saw each other at the dances and celebration days in Escalante and Boulder, but there was nothing like them away to school.<br />
I thought it was too bad Connie hadn't decided to go into the nursing program, but she was discouraged by the degree of difficulty she experienced in her freshman classes and gave up on a college education instead.<br />
I hoped that Margie would not get similarly discouraged if I was there to read some of her English themes and help her with those if she needed me to. I thought she had a good journalistic style, and a good reception from the English teachers seemed to keep her going her freshman year. Her goal was to become a graduate nurse so it was important for her not to get discouraged the first year while she completed some of her requirements.<br />
And as for me, I was busier my third year in student productions than I had been as a sophomore. We rehearsed in the afternoon so we could all get home fairly early. Myrna Mae, a senior theater major, chose Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" for her big student production. She wanted me to play the very long part of the only female in the play, the young wife of the old farmer and the step mother to his two sons. Myrna Mae was never anything but ambitious, but playing this long role turned out to be quite a thankless one since I felt totally incompatible with the fellow playing my old husband farmer. <br />
He was a very earnest and willing actor, but he was simply lacking in authority and appeal for me in the role of my farmer husband. I knew farmer types very well, but Phil did not! He and Myrna Mae were going to form a theater company as soon as she graduated she told me, so she naturally did not perceive anything wrong with his acting.<br />
I was quite proud of myself for learning every word of the longest part I was ever to have in my life, but Dr. Lees, sitting in the audience through the long damned thing, did not seem to appreciate my efforts. Instead, I thought the production probably brought him one step closer to his grave, judging from the look on his face throughout.<br />
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Another student production earned the dubious distinction of being the least rehearsed of any play I was ever in. None of us liked the play, so we played around during rehearsal and did not apply ourselves. When the night came for us to perform in front of Dr. Lees for the theater major's grade, none of us were sure of our lines and were in a constant panic through the eternity we were compelled to try to remember our lines. I did dimly perceive that one of the actors leaped ahead in the script at least three pages, which I don't think the other actors even detected, but I vainly tried to remember what this actor had left out that might give some coherency to the proceedings. I think the theater major got a C- on this production and richly deserved it, since she had failed to bring a whip to rehearsal to sting us into rehearsing. <br />
I don't know whether the other actors ever even acted again. So this was the sort of theater activity that kept me very busy during my junior year, so that I did not have time to put into play the plan I had of telling the truth in all my classes. I thought this would be a very novel thing to do, since everyone at college it seemed to me were reduced to regurgitating back to the teachers what they wanted to hear, regardless of whether it was meaningful or not. We students had been doing that in classes I thought since time immemorial. Wouldn't it be wonderful if somebody dared to break the mold and said hey, this is stupid, this does not make sense. <br />
I did get around to carrying out my plan somewhat in a five credit class I needed in my third quarter. I was to read and review a bunch of textbooks that were to be used for teaching purposes in high school. I absolutely delighted in writing exactly what I thought of each text book, even if I couldn't stand them. I would write, oh this one is absolute garbage. I had never dared write such a thing about a sacred text book in my entire life, but to my surprise this teacher took my reviews in his stride. We did not know each other, so he must have thought I was just a very critical student who just happened to be gifted with the nerve to say what she thought. I think he gave me a B in the course and made no comment on my acid opinions of most of the books. <br />
I thought oh this is fun. Maybe this is what I should have been doing all along if I had not been such a craven coward. I was sorry I had not started on this truth telling policy in my classes earlier, and was looking forward to my senior year when I planned to go into full truth telling mode. I thought I would surprise myself as well as the teachers the following year.<br />
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I also had a somewhat rocky junior year with some of the geniuses I had been nurturing, some referred to me by Sharon, and one I had found on my own. Sharon had apparently said something to Laurence about my shock at being told he was in love with me, since I would never have guessed it from the way he acted. He didn't talk to me for a quarter or so, but finally settled for just being a friend and discussing books, which I was sure he would also quit doing as soon as he could find more eager girl candidates for the honor of being his token wife.<br />
John was the other genius I had collected who attracted my attention by telling me his IQ measured over 200, the highest ever recorded in Ohio history. Nobody believed this statistic, but I was sure John would not have taken so much pride in his achievement if he hadn't been telling the truth. Besides this was mainly what the poor guy had going for him, since he had also inherited the shambling physique of a big bear, a broad peasant face, and eyes set too close together to convey attractiveness. He was taking a lot of hard classes, too, which I would never even have gone near, but he was sure a mistake had been made on my I.Q. test. He could not believe I had scored a lowly 130 points, but I kept assuring him that it was an accurate assessment, sadly, and that I had scored an abysmal 14% on my placement tests in math. If my I.Q. had just been higher, he thought we should marry and have a number of little geniuses. It was our duty. <br />
But that winter John called and begged me to meet him downtown he wanted to show me something. I finally agreed, and he walked me toward the west side along the rail road tracks. At this point I called a halt and told John I had to go back home at once. He hesitated but finally stopped dragging me along on this dark mission. I just did not like the feel of the whole thing and never again agreed to meet John at night. He had to be content with chatting with me when we met up at school. Genius did not always mean stability I was finding out. <br />
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And Sharon, who also had a genius I.Q., had finally gotten so disillusioned with Ghiselin, she said she was going to start her underground paper on campus for sure. She asked me to be one of her first contributors. I looked through my writings and gave her a short piece that reminded me of her a little bit. It was about a fairly young couple having an affair and getting tired of each other, so that not even a daring love affair without benefit of marriage held any excitement anymore. I pictured this being Sharon's state of mind just before she broke poor Dick's heart and found someone else. She tells the hapless lover that she does not want anything from him before bed except a glass of milk. His appeal has waned. The milk symbolized the virginity she had sacrificed which she wished she had back again since she was no longer enjoying her affair.<br />
Sharon published this little piece I had written long before I met Sharon in her first issue of the underground paper which I simply named "Louise", I think, the name of the young woman. The next thing I knew Sharon was calling me outraged because she said the Dean of Women, the very one who had tried to refuse me permission to go out and talk to the suicidal Dick, had been shocked at reading my piece, and ordered all of Sharon's underground paper copies picked up, and she was banned from printing any more! <br />
I could not imagine what the Dean of Women was objecting to. I knew there were still a lot of virgins going to the University of Utah, but why had Louise's affair with her boyfriend gotten to this woman? The affair had not made the young woman happy, I clearly implied.<br />
The Dean of Women did not relent. Sharon was denied permission ever to do an underground paper again. And it was all my fault, or Louise's. And I had to take a class the coming fall from this woman, which I had been putting off as long as possible. She had quite a bad reputation as a teacher. I understood now why.<br />
She taught the most important education class I needed for my education degree. I wondered if she would remember me, well, undoubtedly she would, since I was notorious for a day or so as the author of "Louise".<br />
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But some of the highlights of the year were going with Margie to Wilson family reunions. She was happy because she said now that she had declared her major was nursing, Grandpa Wilson was talking to her more frankly than he ever had before. Grandpa even started to treat me with a little more respect, although he had yet to talk frankly to me. Margie was the only person I knew of, besides maybe one of his sons that Grandpa did talk honestly to. He even implied he had not talked to a female in the family like that for years.<br />
He always seemed to be trying to avoid talking to Mother. He hated her complaints about Daddy. She always said that his attitude was that she had married him, against his advice, so she would get no sympathy from him.<br />
Grandma and Grandpa seemed surprised we were staying to Darlene's house so we could get better acquainted with her and her little girl. They seemed resigned to the fact that they were never going to know them very well. <br />
And that was the year I finally met Varl, Aunt Anne's boy, to a family reunion, who had finally returned from the service, all done with that he said. He was the handsomest thing I had about ever seen, but best of all we loved each other on sight. He took me home and we talked for hours. We even exchanged a kiss or two, but I decided that actually dating him would be a bit much. Cousin Varl nodded when I said that I thought we were just too closely related to take this attraction further. He had probably had so many girls in love with him by then, he knew very well he might not be faithful long. <br />
Sometime later I heard from Aunt Anne that he had found a very nice girl he was marrying. Then I heard that they were having a child, a son, and then another one. The reason I am telling more of this story was because then I heard that he was drinking and partying again and breaking this wife's heart. But that spree did not last any time at all. He did not see a truck stopped ahead while driving up the highway with a girl until too late, and plowed into it, and they were both killed instantly. <br />
I went to the funeral and saw Jerry, the young second cousin who had lived across the street from me when I lived to Great Grandma's, grieving his heart out over his brother, just older than he was, dying way too soon. He was comforted to see me. Varl must have told him that he had met me and we shared great rapport. My Wilson cousin soul mate was gone to the other side but that was not the last time, I would ever feel Varl's presence.<br />
One night traveling along that dark highway where he was killed, I felt him in the car, strong as could be. I said, "Varl, why are you here?" I had gone along that highway numerous times before and never felt Varl's presence in the car with me. I went around the curve and there was a car with its rear end stuck quite far out on the highway, wrecked. The people were gone out of it, but the car itself had not yet been removed. Seeing that battered car, I knew that spirits really do exist. "Thank you, Varl," I thought.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-34265355072477299212011-08-01T17:15:00.000-07:002013-12-03T07:46:34.184-08:00Memoir: Chapter 43: Tending my little cousin Sue while my Aunt Vesta has a hysterectomy and deciding to live with Aunt Darlene for a year because my Uncle Crae was still missing in actionJust as I was getting ready to go back to Boulder, Mother called and said that my Aunt Vesta needed someone to come to Washington and take care of her baby while she had a hysterectomy which just could not wait. Margie had gone to high school in Richland a year, but for some reason she could not go or Mother thought I should. I don't know all the reasons that she decided I needed to go up there immediately.<br />
I was mainly worried that Dean would end his basic training and would come home while I was gone, and I would miss him altogether. But I knew if Margie couldn't go there was nobody in the family old enough to take that responsibility besides me.<br />
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Baby Sue had nearly lost her life when she was very young. When she was born she appeared to be so healthy that the doctors decided she had not been affected by the incompatible blood types of her parents, one positive and the other, my aunt, R-H-negative. Then suddenly Baby Sue started to fail and had to be hospitalized immediately and her blood transfused. She had recovered but now, sadly, Aunt Vesta was telling Mother that she was showing some signs of brain damage they thought, which her older brother Jim had escaped when he was transfused. They had gotten to him in time. <br />
When I saw Sue after I took a plane to Pasco, I thought she was such a beautiful child I could not believe anything could be wrong with her. She had black curling hair and the most gorgeous big blue eyes. But after I took her and started handling her I could see that at nine months old she was slightly stiff. I did not want to think it, nobody wanted to think it, but she did seem somewhat brain damaged.<br />
I thought the very least I could do is give a month out of my life to her. What kind of life was she going to have if she was indeed impaired. Nobody really knew then what that damage was going to consist of, but she was a pretty easy baby for me to tend.<br />
She turned out to have quite a severe case of cerebral palsy and was completely deaf, but my Aunt Vesta went to college and learned to teach children who were handicapped as she was. Eventually she learned to read lips so well that her boss was not aware for three years she was deaf. She continued to work until she was very close to retirement age. She is one of the biggest success stories I know about of someone conquering such a severe handicap. How could I possibly complain about my lot in life I always used to think when Sue with cerebral palsy had risen to the challenge of making a life for herself with such perseverance and courage. <br />
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In those days women stayed in the hospital longer after an operation. Aunt Vesta did not come home for ten days or so, and I stayed a couple of weeks more so that she could have time to recover before she started to lift Sue again. She needed me there to lift her until she would not risk her stitches tearing loose if she did.<br />
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That was a sobering time for me, but I did not regret helping her out, and tending Sue caused me to start thinking about another plan I had to get better acquainted with another little cousin, the daughter of my Uncle Crae, my mother's brother, who was still listed as missing in action in the war with Japan. His plane had gone down in 1945, and in spite of ground searches, had not been found. The pilot had radioed they were going down on land.<br />
Crae's wife, Darlene, lived with her daughter Trudy in a house on the east side in Salt Lake owned by her mother. Her youngest brother was still going to high school. Her youngest sister had just graduated from high school and was going to BYU. Her mother worked and Darlene took care of the housekeeping and cooking while staying at home with Trudy who was about five years old. <br />
I was thinking about asking Darlene if she and her mother would rent Margie and me a room. We could easily take the bus to the University from her house. It was a very safe neighborhood. I didn't know if Margie would be willing to share this room with me, as I thought since she was planning to enter the nursing program, she would soon be going to live in the nurse's dorm, after she had completed her first year of requirements.<br />
Margie wasn't too excited about the idea. She had been thinking she would go to the freshman dorm as I had. But I tried to convince her this was probably our only chance to interact with this little girl and her mother. I thought that it was best thing we could ever do for our missing Uncle Crae, as I didn't see how we could even know Aunt Darlene or Trudy just seeing them to an occasional family reunion. We could talk to Aunt Darlene if we stayed with her, and try to draw her out about her loss. I knew it was tremendous. I thought we could also catch up on some sister talk we had been missing all the years she and I had been separated.<br />
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Well, maybe because Margie had not gone to Washington to take care of Sue and I had, she agreed to go along with my plan even though I knew she doubted she could have as much fun as she could to the freshman dorm. And our experience staying with Aunt Darlene proved to be even more austere than I feared. Aunt Darlene was absolutely convinced that Crae had made his way to a Shangri-la from the plane and was still alive and happy and would come home someday. <br />
But I talked to her a lot. Margie and I had classes at different times. I don't know what she did, but I found out Darlene had lived a very hard life. As the oldest of eight children, she had always been the babysitter while her mother worked, as her father had deserted the family.<br />
She said one night she was home and she looked up and saw her father on the back porch. He looked back at her, and then he just simply walked away again. I thought that was such a sad story. Her mother was a more cheerful sort than the melancholy Aunt Darlene who found her comfort in the church. Her mother, who had a steady boyfriend, was not religious but expressed some pride because the daughter who had just graduated from high school was engaged to one of the Prophet Brigham Young's great grandsons, I have forgotten how many greats.<br />
Darlene was one of the few Mormon girls I knew who had insisted on going on a mission. That was where she and Crae met. They married, and Crae had not lived to see Trudy who was born after his plane went down.<br />
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But Crae was a good guy. I always felt his spirit was close. He was happy that Margie and I were trying to do something to help Darlene get over her grief. Darlene had a hauntingly beautiful face, but I thought she had been damaged by the restricted life she had been forced to lead after her father abandoned his family.<br />
One time I was talking to Darlene in the kitchen, and suddenly there was an exchange between us that I can only describe as a contact of our spirits. That is the only time I have ever experienced such a thing. I thought this woman had one of the purest spirits I have ever known even though her opportunities had been so limited.<br />
Not long after we left, Darlene's mother had to have a knee operation if she was to keep on working and supporting her son, and she suffered a fatal heart attack after surgery. Darlene really was the head of her family now but fortunately her brothers and sisters were independent. She just had Trudy to worry about, but she never married again. The church was always her comfort. <br />
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Trudy, her daughter, grew up to be a very beautiful young woman who proceeded to have a large family. She made sure she would never be lonely, but her husband stuck around to help her raise hers. She had all but forgotten us from the year we spent living in their home. But I know it made a difference to Crae who I thought looked down from heaven and smiled at us.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-46472139302573789382011-07-29T11:12:00.000-07:002013-12-01T09:11:10.888-08:00Memoir: Chapter 42: Writing about the students covered with sores and being ignoredI was beginning to have such reservations about writing anything for Ghiselin that could possibly impress him I wondered if I should not major in theater after all, with English as my minor so I could teach both. I had learned that Ghiselin was married and with children, but he just seemed too unacceptably remote to female writers. I felt that Sharon was never going to get through to him, and probably neither was I, as brilliant a poet as he unquestionably was. He was as hard to decipher as his poetry, he seemed beyond my reach. I hated to give up on Ghiselin but something soon happened with Laurence that did convince me to declare my major in theater rather than English. <br />
I was having to take some education classes, too, required to teach high school, which were very uninspiring. Laurence sympathized with me as he had taken them, too, even though he was going to get his masters and said he was planning to teach at the college level if he was able to secure the opportunity. I wondered if that was why he was interested in talking to a bookish student like me. Was he thinking that a connection to a wife might make finding opportunity easier? And he might be able to tolerate one who read books better? There still had not been one spark between us!<br />
I found out all too soon that he did indeed have this in mind, as after several meetings, he told me he wanted to tell me a secret that he did not want me to tell anyone. Since Sharon was the one who had introduced him to me and was the only person at the University we both talked to I assumed he meant especially not to tell her. Then he said that he was in love with me! I was dumbfounded. He had never touched me and showed no signs of ever wanting to.<br />
I immediately recalled what I thought was rather a bad dream I had had about him about a month before. I dreamed that he held his hand out to me and when I looked at him again I saw the face of Lucifer. The dream ended with me now hesitant about taking his proffered hand. <br />
I didn't care what he had tried to make me promise I told Sharon what he said as soon as I saw her. I could see that she was also very disturbed by his declaration of love for me. Especially when I said that he was not attracted to me. She was afraid for me too, but I assured her that I had to have a man that was wildly attracted to me, so there was no danger of me becoming dangerously confused by what he had said to me, not like that other girl must have been.<br />
I made up my mind for sure then that I could not make English my major. Ghiselin would be my most important mentor as a would be writer. And he was sure to upset and disappoint me just as Laurence was doing. <br />
That spring I also read a short story Laurence had written, published in the student literary magazine Ghiselin mentored. It was about feeling guilt over a sacrificial lamb. I thought at once that I had been the sacrificial lamb he had in mind! <br />
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I thought if Lees, head of the theater department, proved to be a disappointment, too, at least I would have fun doing plays and performing. I had not been able to get another role in big productions after the plum one in "The Great Aunt Sits on the Floor" which I hoped the actors did not remember, as I did not want to be identified with an old lady.<br />
I did, however, try out for the leading role in "The Mad Woman of Chaillot" during my sophomore year. I thought she would be an ideal part of me to play. Lees however cast his wife in this role, but asked me to work on the production to fulfill one of my requirements in theater. I played a bit part and did some tech, walking home at night after rehearsal to my convenient room at the Phi Mu house. I also got to observe very closely Lees' relationship with his wife whom he all but ignored. She reflected his lack of interest in her acting I thought by giving a very uninspired performance. The only person he worked with was a young comic who was so good that he seemed to be a lot of fun for Lees.<br />
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I had by then found out that nearly every teacher in the theater department had benefited from roles Lees had given them in his productions. He appeared to be keeping everyone happy by throwing them a bone now and then in the form of a part. They talked about these parts in their classes. It was no wonder there were few left over for the students, who would be here today and gone tomorrow.<br />
One of my speech teachers did the big Shakespeare parts whenever Lees could not secure a Broadway or Hollywood actor. I was very conscious of this teacher's voice, which he seemed very proud of, but I always found it annoying when an actor relied too heavily on velvet voice tones and not enough on thinking through the role.<br />
I did not even like Orson Welles in MacBeth who Lees had been able to persuade to come to the university my freshman year. He was just too Orson Welles in the part, I thought.<br />
On the other hand I got extremely excited about the intense acting of a war veteran named H.E.D. Redford, who I thought out acted them all. Everyone was mesmerized with H.E.D whenever he appeared on stage. You could not only understand what words he was saying, but you could also take in the meaning which I thought happened all too seldom in Shakespeare plays. I had been to plays where it was almost impossible to decipher what anyone was saying through all the bombast. However, if every Shakespeare play had been performed by actors of H.E.D.'s caliber it would have been a different story.<br />
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I was unfortunate enough to be cast in a one act play by Saroyan chosen by Miss Utah that year for her student production. She went on to become Miss America by virtue of her performance of a speech out of Shakespeare. I heard it on television and thought she was of the hammy actress school, but it appeared that the judges were so impressed with a beautiful contestant who would attempt such a difficult feat that they awarded her the grand prize. She was a tall striking beauty who reminded me of my beautiful cousin Cheryl more than anybody.<br />
But I knew Miss America's limitations because she had previously directed me to perform in her production in that hammy style she favored. I tried my best to please her in rehearsal but in the performance I reverted to my more naturalistic style. She watched me very closely and hissed at me when I came off stage, "You didn't act the part as I directed you! I would never use you again!"<br />
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She and I both tried out for the part of Cleopatra in Shakespeare's play. I thought it was a foregone conclusion that she would win the role. She strode about the stage in glorious fashion but I doubt if anyone understood a word she was saying, as she acted the part clear to death, and nobody was able to stop her. <br />
So I could see that Lees was old and tired and even sick and the actors pretty much acted the way they wanted to in his plays now days. He had given another choice Shakespeare role in King Lear to his wife and she had not been very inspiring in that role either, so I figured that she more or less demanded these roles which he for some reason kept giving to her. I had so far not seen any sign that he was particularly attached to any male actors as Archie had not yet come along.<br />
Another theater student did point out to me an older male actor she said had been around acting for Lees in Shakespeare plays a long time. He looked as though he would have been perfect in a part like Iago. He had a wife and six kids, she said, but he was still to put it delicately 'decadent'. I assumed this meant that he was suspected of being homosexual, but I did not blink at this information since I was used to men who married and had children without letting it interfere with their decadent ways. <br />
Perhaps the most disturbing fellow who had been one of Lees' acting proteges was a professor everyone called Robert. He was simply a sadist. There is no other way I can put it. He proceeded to try to break down a male friend of mine in class who seemed helpless to defend himself. His object seemed to be to make him cry. I took it as long as I could and then got up and walked out.<br />
I was forced to go back, however, as I was only a sophomore and could not complete a theater major without taking more of his classes. He was supposed to teach the first play writing class the University was going to offer in my junior year, and I couldn't miss that. But I doubted very much if he and I would ever get along again. Such men are apt never to forgive a slight no matter how they might treat others, and he proved to be one of them. <br />
He had also been hired to do the experimental theater-in-the round and it was said was going to produce some original plays including some of his own. Lees gave him plum roles, but Marilyn, my most knowledgeable informant about the university theater world, said that the woman Robert married had suffered a nervous breakdown and was still in a psych ward as far as she knew. That was rather stunning news, as I had thought that Robert was clearly the most outwardly gay of all the professors who might be in hiding. He seemed the most bitter about the need for subterfuge, I had thought.<br />
I was prepared to sympathize but I could not take his meanness. I thought hiring him had been a mistake no matter how brilliant he was. He was too embittered and disturbed to be teaching the young without damaging them someway. <br />
I knew he would never cast me in a part just because of that one protest. I could not take sadism. No, I couldn't, but the worst upset I experienced in my sophomore year was in Lee's Introduction to Theater class, required for theater majors, during my last quarter that year. He asked us along toward the middle of the quarter to write something personal about ourselves. As I started to write I thought that I would take a chance on Lees. Indeed I could not keep from writing what I did.<br />
I wrote that the students at this somewhat fictional university I made it sound like were all covered with sores, but nobody paid any attention and acted as though they were all perfectly normal. My point was that no matter how abnormal anyone acted in school, this was not going to be acknowledged by anybody. I was thinking that the professors might exhibit sores, too, which Robert had certainly done in his theater class, trying to make a male student cry. But nobody tended to respond to signs of mental disturbance in the professors either, let alone the students. I could just imagine Robert going through college covered with sores which nobody addressed, and then being hired to teach, still covered with sores that nobody addressed. It was the way students had always been treated. So how could they not help but end up as professors who were shockingly disfigured with running sores, too?<br />
Lees did not return my paper when he returned the others and asked me to come to his office. When I got there he pushed my paper across the desk to me and said, "I can't grade this paper. This is not what I asked for." I thought he sounded quite plaintive. Why was I creating problems for him?<br />
I took the paper and said, "That's all right." I meant that he could fail me but I was not going to offer to rewrite it. If he was going to be that careful not to ask me what this was all about!<br />
He gave me a B at the end of the class, so I guess he decided he would not fail me because I refused to rewrite the paper. Well, poor man, there were still rumors going around that his ulcers were killing him and he might have to retire. Perhaps it was understandable why he just ignored the gauntlet that I must have appeared to have thrown down. I wondered what he would have done if I had revealed a deep stab wound on my body somewhere. Looked the other way as I bled my way out the door? <br />
I could still go on a while I thought. But I was going to have to get out the fact that I had been molested in childhood and concealed it, not once but twice, while I was still going to college. I needed to have as many people as possible who might help with my cause. I desperately needed to have more people aware, for I feared my father too much not to try to get a whole army of supporters. I just did not know how I was going to go about surfacing the facts in these events in which my father was involved, as part of the reason the men targeted me. <br />
I felt I was seeing intrigue of a similar sort here at the university, and in this theater department. I suspected Lees of leading a somewhat double life just as my father had always done, but he was no longer active, so I could not point to any current behavior that seemed to damn him. But that paper was meant to break through his defenses if possible. <br />
I meant to call him on his behavior and any college professor's who favored young males unduly over females while married and presenting respectability and family to the world. I did not have a chance at this university for a fair assessment of my talent or intellect when being taught by such professors. Heterosexual professors favored males enough without married homosexual ones who felt forced to marry because universities would not hire openly gay professors. If a male heterosexual professor had been a womanizer, ogling and favoring certain female students, his behavior would have been unacceptable, so what was different about a married bisexual professor favoring appealing young males? <br />
No wonder Robert was bitter. And no wonder his wife had suffered a nervous breakdown not long after marrying him. He seemed to be saying with every angry word he resented what he had to do to be hired to teach at a university no matter how brilliant or creative he was. <br />
Well, I did not expect Dr. Lees to talk to me about all this, but I was serving him notice that I had something on my mind that went a lot deeper than what he wanted to read in a paper. The truth. Why not the truth. Oh, no, more lies and coverup was what he was really asking for. Well, I had had enough of writing to please the professors. And society. <br />
I had a plan in mind I was going to carry out in my junior year after I thought about Lees' reaction to my paper. Why didn't I just write the truth as I saw it in every class. Treat all my professors with the same dose of truth I had written for him. I needed to write from the state of mind I had reached after years, an eternity, of covering up to protect men like my father, who Utah society could not bear to acknowledge were practicing bisexuals. The religion was too dominating in Utah for one thing. Acceptance of gays and bisexuals too abhorrent to the Mormon faction. No, they needed to be either cured or persecuted into leaving or they needed to go on covering up. That was their solution.<br />
Yes, a university greatly needed to debate this question, so I thought that in my junior year I would make my contribution to the cause and see what happened!Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-87206504672513112662011-07-28T12:05:00.000-07:002013-12-01T06:51:07.045-08:00Memoirs: Chapter 41: Meeting the genius students and teachers at the University<div style="text-align: left;">
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Somewhere along the way I met Sharon, a hardy poet from Ogden with a genius I.Q. who was so world weary even though only a year older than I was, she seemed considerably older than her years. She suggested she had been sexually active since childhood, although I did not know if I should believe her.<br />
She also turned out to be practically a professional roller skater. I could hardly believe this either until I saw her expensive roller skates on a visit to her apartment to see some of her art work. She said that she and another genius student, Dick Layman, had been going together for two years or more. She said that Dick smoked heavily and got no exercise, but he and still another genius student named Laurence had taken over the University student newspaper and were practically putting it out themselves. Plus, Lawrence, a very good poet, was the favorite student of Ghiselin, a modern poet and professor, who she said they all regarded as the most brilliant teacher in the English department. He was also adviser to the student literary magazine staff.<br />
I resolved to take a class from Ghiselin right away although the fact that he was a modern poet with a couple of published books of poetry was somewhat daunting, since I regarded writing as well as reading modern poetry as my weakness. My forte was really dialogue. But at first I loved Ghiselin. He seemed extremely intelligent. <br />
Sharon said that she would introduce me to Laurence as soon as possible who had simply read everything because she thought he and I would get along famously because I was such a book reader.<br />
But she said Laurence was still trying to recover from a traumatic divorce from a freshman girl who had gotten pregnant almost at once, which she indicated might have been entrapment. When she mentioned her name and the fact that she had lived at the freshman dorm I recalled the girl who had been simply crazy about this guy, a tall veteran. I heard she left college to live with her folks when their quick marriage in order to legitimize the coming child did not work out. Sympathetic freshman girlfriends said this savage older guy had simply ripped her heart out with no qualms at all. <br />
So I did not know if I was too eager to meet this ruthless individual, even though Sharon seemed to think that the whole problem was the girl not reading enough books.<br />
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I had not known Sharon very long when she called me up and told me that she had fallen in love with someone else, and was now in the process of halfway killing her boyfriend, Dick, who was taking it very hard. She said that he was positively suicidal and she had given him my number at the Phi Mu house, so if he got desperate enough to do away with himself, could he call and talk to me first? <br />
Wouldn't you know it, Dick did call me and asked me if I please would not come out and talk to him. When I told the Phi Mu housemother I needed to respond to this call she told me I would have to call up the Dean of Women to get permission to leave after hours. <br />
So I called the Dean of Women who tried to talk me out of this mission of mercy. I told her if she did not give me permission I was going to go anyway, even if I had to move, so she reluctantly agreed that I could go. I was not sure that I was any comfort to Dick who said that he was dropping out of college and going to the northwest where he hoped to get a job working on a newspaper, that he had layout expertise and just as well be making money instead of doing it for free. He felt he had to get away from Sharon before he could stop wanting to commit suicide. I hastily agreed that leaving might be better. <br />
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Dick looked so unhealthy I just knew that Sharon had probably been enticed away by a more vigorous genius who would probably go roller skating with her. After Dick left I met her new boyfriend, who was Jewish and even more wild acting and bold talking than I envisioned. I was immediately envious because I had always wanted to meet some young Jewish intellectuals who happened to be very scarce in Utah. She admitted he was so different from Dick, that she had to try to keep up with him, rather than the other way around.<br />
I was very impressed because later on her Jewish boyfriend even started bringing her down to visit me in southern Utah. He would leave her and return to Salt Lake while we went camping.<br />
In the meantime, she said she had another former genius student pal for me to meet who she revealed had been part of a quartet of geniuses in their circle their freshman year. His name was Phil and reluctantly she told me that he had been so upset at Laurence's sudden marriage, he had left the University, even though he was only a freshman. I gathered from what Sharon did not say that he might have been in love with Laurence.<br />
If Laurence was a bisexual and had broken the heart of the beautiful freshman girl as well as that of a brilliant freshman male student, wasn't he rather dangerous? After she told me that, I had doubts about Sharon's match making proclivities. Was she setting me up with Laurence just because I might make a more knowledgeable wife for a veteran ten years older? It was hard to tell, but Sharon, more than any other girl I met at college, put me in touch with interesting intellectual geniuses, and for that I would be forever grateful. These were the kind of guys I hoped to meet in college. <br />
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As for Phil, he was just in town for a short visit, but he wanted to write to me, so I agreed to correspond with him, since Sharon had declared he had read almost as much as Laurence, even though he was considerably younger. I know he used so many big words and such turgid language I had a very hard time making out the meaning of what he was saying. I thought he was probably just talking around and around the subject of being attracted to males. He did wonder if I might be the lost chord which I thought might mean I could be the one girl who could possibly restore him to normalcy. Did Sharon think I was Laurence's lost chord, too? <br />
I hadn't really told anyone anything about my past experiences with bisexuals, but apparently I conveyed a greater understanding and tolerance of this breed than most girls my age.<br />
But words could be used to obscure as well as to reveal, and reading Phil's letters caused me to start developing a theory that these genius poets I met in college wrote modern poetry to hide the true meaning of what they were saying from almost everyone except those who had the experience to know what they were talking about. I had looked through some of Ghiselin's books of poetry and found that each poem required such a depth of study I did not have time to figure out hardly any of them. Either that, or I was singularly untalented at interpretation.<br />
I was not sure my new theory was going to help me write modern poems that would impress Ghiselin either. I would probably be considered suspicious and even intolerant. He would not like that at all. <br />
But I was really enjoying getting acquainted with Ghiselin, as he was clearly the genius mentor of the genius student writers. He had very penetrating powers of analysis. At first he made a great deal of sense to me. Sharon said Ghiselin seemed far less impressed with her poetry than with Laurence's, and so far had not accepted any of her submissions to the student literary magazine. She was, in fact, getting so annoyed with not getting her poetry published, she started talking about starting an underground publication of her own so she could get read on campus some way. <br />
Toward the middle of my sophomore year, she said that Laurence, she called him Larry, was finally ready to meet a new girl. When we met, Sharon introduced him to me and left for a class while Laurence and I proceeded to talk fast and furious about books for close to two hours.<br />
It was true, Laurence had read simply everything. And he talked about literature extremely well I thought, making his meanings perfectly clear which I appreciated. He found out I had not read Proust's "Swann's Way" which he said I simply must read. I was able to tell him I had already found the journals of Andre Gide in the university library in which I said Gide was far more explicit than most American writers about his taste for young males, as was Genet, some of whose novels and plays I had also found and read. I told him I could not get over what Genet had the nerve to write. It was hard to believe in suppressed Utah, that a writer could be so frank and disturbing as this French novelist and playwright. <br />
We did not talk a lot about the subject in these books, but Laurence must have observed that I had a marked interest in reading writers who wrote very frankly about homosexuality. As a matter of fact. I learned from these writers, so I was always trying to find the ones who dared to write about it. <br />
He must have wondered what that indicated, but I figured that since I was still so young, 18 at the time, he decided not to scare me off by interrogating me too deeply. I told him I knew the girl he had married, which he said was still a painful subject, but I decided there was no point in hiding the fact that I had talked to her when she was still so in love with him, she could think of nothing else. <br />
Sharon indicated that he found her to be too intellectually shallow for him to tolerate! So why had he pursued the girl so ruthlessly that an unwanted pregnancy resulted? Oh well, I was still a virgin, and I knew I better stay that way if I expected Father to keep paying for my expenses. Besides I would not have wanted to be in Laurence's poor young wife's shoes. I had even talked to the girl about the divorce, and she could hardly keep from crying. I didn't tell him that, though.<br />
He was ten years older than both of us were. It was obvious these returning veterans going to college needed to be regarded with some sense of caution. This guy had been to war. What did he care about the broken hearts of silly college girls who unwisely got pregnant prematurely, after all he had been through.<br />
One of Laurence's eyes had been pierced. I pictured some horrible war wound, but Laurence, said no, when I dared to ask him about being shot, that he had been hit in the eye with an arrow when he was a kid. He said he had managed to get through his years in the military without a scratch.<br />
But gosh, how was I going to compete as a writer with this guy? Oh well, this could be my sacrifice to the war effort, having to take a back seat when a seasoned veteran returned to compete with me for publication in the student literary magazine. What a great opportunity for editors to publish such guys! <br />
No wonder he was Ghiselin's favorite student writer. He would have been mine, too, I was sure, had I been a faculty adviser. In fact, I began to wonder if anything I wrote for Ghiselin could ever attract his attention, it might seem so callow to him.<br />
I didn't tell Laurence about my dismay at having to compete with him as a student writer. I thought that would have been very unpatriotic, and could have contributed even more to his air of disillusionment with life. He did not seem to have much hope for mankind. Nor did I feel a single spark emanating from him to me. I could not imagine how he had gotten the other freshman girl pregnant if he had shown no more interest in her physical charms than he did in mine. <br />
I compared Dean's healthy interest in any opportunity to neck with me. I thought that Laurence's experience with the other freshman girl had probably dampened his ardor, but his sexual feelings seemed strangely dead. Maybe this was the real Laurence damaged by war and possibly by the restricted life he indicated he had been forced to lead in rural Utah where he was from. I figured we were destined just to be friends, and agreed to meet him now and then just 'to talk.'Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-81489934606873685472011-07-26T09:52:00.000-07:002013-11-30T09:32:44.269-08:00Memoir: Chapter 41: My new boyfriend is a troubled soul<div style="text-align: left;">
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When I came home from college after my first year, Pole, a young guy from Escalante, heard Margie was going to school in Escalante so thought to to be the first one to date her. He brought his cousin Dean with him for me. Dean was my age, a couple of years older than Pole, and had just graduated from high school that year and was trying to decide what he was going to do next.<br />
I recalled being very impressed by him the year we were nine. He came from Escalante with a group of men related to Alf Black who was living on the ranch at the time. Alf was about Grandpa's age and he had told him he had a home for the rest of his life on that ranch. Alf would help with the chores but was generally company for Grandpa.<br />
Among the men in the group of visitors to see Alf was his rich son-in-law from Salt Lake. He had taken it upon himself to hire Dean to sing for them as they drove around the country seeing the sights. I just could not get over a boy my age being hired to sing for this group of partying male tourists all day. I could hardly bear it because they drove off after picking up Alf and did not give me any chance to hear this boy sing.<br />
Now here he was, a blind date for me, to help his cousin Pole look good. The two of them were very entertaining without yet singing for us. Pole was a great story teller and Dean was the appreciator who would remind him of more stories to tell about their relatives and other characters in Escalante these boys seemed to have studied for years. <br />
Best of all I was physically attracted to this boy as I had been to no other. I had begun to wonder if I was even normal I had not gotten with a normal heterosexual boy until I was so old. Eighteen years old that summer, having had only one or two dates with Alvin from Escalante who had been physically appealing to me, too, but not like this boy. I feared however from hearing them talk that they were both quite bad drinkers. I knew from what had happened to some of the Boulder boys that you could become an alcoholic at a very young age.<br />
I don't recall either one of them drinking on our first date. Possibly they were trying to make a good impression, but when we met them in Escalante a couple of weeks later to go to the annual mutton fry at Posey Lake, Dean was so drunk he was not even making sense. He was sitting in the back of the car saying some very hostile crazy things.<br />
I sent Pole a sharp questioning look. He said, "Oh, he's all right. He gets like this sometimes when he's been drinking."<br />
I got into the car very warily. This kind of alcoholic behavior I had not wanted to see from this guy so soon. I thought it was a very bad sign.<br />
I saw my friend Connie from Escalante later at the dance and she sort of hinted at why Dean might be upset enough to get drunk out of his mind. He was beginning to sober up some by dancing, but he still was not his appealing self. Connie said that Elaine, the girl who had more or less been his girlfriend in high school, was very upset with him because he was taking me to the Mutton Fry. Connie was very hesitant to say much as she said that Dean had quite a temper and she did not want him mad at her. <br />
Sure enough I saw Dean dancing with Elaine and after a couple of dances had gone by and he was still dancing with her I went by them and said something to him. I had no intentions of ever dating him again. I did not like being humiliated on a date. <br />
He immediately dropped Elaine on the sidelines and came over to me. When I started to raise hell as we were dancing, I saw a look of such icy fury in his eyes I immediately shut up. Well, so maybe the guy was suffering over what he was doing. He obviously wanted to see more of me, but knew he was breaking his high school girlfriend's heart. I knew how hard girls take those things. I didn't say any more to him about Elaine, but I was wary the rest of the evening. <br />
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Dean was soon acting as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He said that as soon as I went back to school he was going to Montana to work on a dam. An older guy he knew was taking him who could get him a job even though he had had no experience.<br />
I was surprised as I thought going to Montana and working on a dam with winter coming on might be a job from hell. He said he had to have a job and he could make more money there than any where else.<br />
Well, September came as always, and I went back to school, with some relief. Although I was attracted to this young guy as I had been to no other physically, I thought we were wildly incompatible every other way. It was almost like he had street smarts but admitted to having loafed his way through school, hardly doing any work at all. He bragged about being passed no matter what he did because of his popularity.<br />
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I told him I was very different. I looked on every school I went to as an opportunity and always earned top grades. I thought it was a waste of time to loaf your way through any school. After all, you were only hurting yourself.<br />
He looked at me as though I were the nerdiest girl he could imagine, but I did not care. I wasn't going to dumb myself down for anybody. Let him marry that other girl. She seemed crazy about him.<br />
I found out that Elaine's aunt on her mother's side as well as an uncle had married Dean's older brother and sister. Dawn and General, Petersen girls I had known quite well, had married Pole's older brother and Dean's older brother. The two cousins had dated the Petersen sisters just as Pole and Dean were now dating two King sisters. I was sure that Pole had set his cap for Margie the way he acted. And he wanted company so he did everything possible to promote a match between his first cousin Dean and me.<br />
The whole thing seemed increasingly absurd. Margie soon became impatient with Pole's manipulating too. At first she welcomed a place to stay in Escalante with a friendly soul, which Pole provided with his sister Melba's help. They all loved Margie and treated her like a million dollars.<br />
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Dean started writing to me, too, as soon as I got back to school. I agreed to this mostly out of curiosity, but was shocked when a letter from him came in the most perfect handwriting. I could see that Dean was very proud of his penmanship which was probably one reason he wanted to correspond with me, but he had very little to say. And I came to think his handwriting was so rigid he would have a nervous breakdown if he had to scribble.<br />
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A far cry from my own handwriting which he complained he had trouble reading, so I began to send him typed letters instead. It was not in me to turn down a willing penpal. I was too fascinated by then with the letter form which is what I had come to rely on so heavily for connecting to the family.<br />
I had taken to writing long analytical letters to all my sisters, whenever they responded to mine. If we were going to talk and be good friends, we had to do it this way. We certainly could not use the telephone. Daddy was far too frugal a provider for our needs to allow that.<br />
I was soon including Dean as a regular correspondent. He did not tell me, but I found out years later that he was exchanging letters with Elaine all the time he was away from home, too. There is nothing like making doubly sure you have devoted girl friends who will comfort a poor fellow far from home for the first time.<br />
I took it that Dean found working on the dam at Hungry Horse extremely trying and difficult. Along toward spring he said that he was going to join the Air Force as he thought that would be better than working on dams as a laborer. And of course he would need lots of letters when he found out where he was going to be sent to do his basic training.<br />
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I was so excited when I found out he was being sent to a base camp not far from Los Angeles. I had such a longing to get to California somehow I decided going to see him would be the perfect excuse. This was of course probably something that the less aggressive Elaine would not even have thought of. I was afraid Utah was going to become increasingly inhospitable for a rebellious girl like me. I needed to find a place outside of Utah to land just in case there was trouble down the road.<br />
I called up my cousin Winolia living in Woods Cross who I knew had a cousin in Whittier, California. I proposed we go down there for the summer to find work, confessing that my new boyfriend Dean was motivating me to go to California to visit him. She thought we could stay with her cousin, agreeing that this might be a great adventure.<br />
I informed my parents that I would not even be coming home where they were sure to take me prisoner and hold me captive to hard labor, but wanted to go to California to seek employment for the first time. I pointed out how I had sacrificed every summer to come home and help, and had never had the chance like other young people go out and get job experience.<br />
It is possible that they thought I might be getting too outspoken for Utah, too, so they agreed to pay for my bus ride and gave me $100. When that was gone and I still didn't have a job I would have to come home.<br />
Dean must have been surprised at my devotion to him when I announced I was coming to California so I would be able to see him when he could get time off once in a while. But he was quite agreeable.<br />
He did not realize I was also scouting a new location just in case Utah did not continue to work out for me. I was still worried about staying employed as a teacher even if I should become one. I thought I needed other options.<br />
Winolia and I were given the spare bedroom at her cousin's in Whittier who was very nice to Winolia, an unexpected but welcome visitor. Winolia soon found a job candling eggs. I was hesitant to go after this kind of job. It sounded too much like ranch work to me. In fact, after I had visited with Dean a couple of times, who made his way over by bus to the cousin's house, I was ready to bide my time until I had run out of money and had to go home.<br />
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Winolia had proved to be a very good chaperone. She made it plain she was agreeable to Dean coming to visit me, but neither one of us were to get carried away if we were to keep in her good graces. She did all this as my Uncle Joel would have done, quite diplomatically.<br />
She seemed somewhat relieved when I said that I had better go home and visit with the family and do some work to earn my university expenses before I went back to school. She said she was going to stay with her job another month and then would probably return to her family home in Woods Cross, either going to school or finding a higher paying job.<br />
I held on to just enough money to take the bus home, or as close as I could get by bus. A family member met me as they had missed another hand doing the summer work. They were glad to see me as bottling season was on. It wasn't as though there wasn't a lot to do. We never ran out of work now that Daddy's operation had gotten so big. Nobody hardly even saw Mother, she was so busy.<br />
All in all I was very satisfied with the adventure of going to California I had managed with the help of a connection to Dean. I could see how he might continue to come in handy when I wanted to travel. I fell so in love with the jacaranda and the bougainvillea and the palm trees around Los Angeles. I kept thinking I must come back there. I wanted to go to New York but Daddy would think I was going to the ends of the earth and would not be safe, but California was within reach!Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-13006546035691740102011-07-25T14:55:00.000-07:002013-11-30T08:45:11.933-08:00Memoir: Chapter 40: I meet dorm mates who will be my good friends my freshman year<div style="text-align: right;">
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I met only my roommate whose name was Darlene from Tooele while I was busy rehearsing and going on the road with the play, "Great Aunt Sits on the Floor". I was having great fun touring with the play. The cast was terrific with a number of the most accomplished performers in the theater department. I was very surprised that the head of the theater department, Lowell Lees, directed and traveled with us and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. Being of a suspicious mind, I immediately began to wonder if part of his motivation for touring was just to get away from home. I heard almost immediately he was married and had three children, grown now with one attending college and majoring in theater, too. I also learned that he was famous for his direction of Shakespeare as well as Broadway hits, drawing actors from both places to the University to be in his plays. Well, he could do what he wanted to do. Perhaps going on the road was therapy for him as I also heard he was plagued with ulcers and was considering retirement he was suffering so much from his ailment. <br />
I decided not to declare my intentions to major in drama as I knew English teachers would be more in demand than drama teachers, simply because more were needed to teach English every year. I decided to make drama my minor since I intended to write plays, so I wanted to be in as many as possible so I would know how to write them.<br />
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My first experience with director Lees was a happy one, so I just hoped for the best. When the play was over I was able to get acquainted with the two girls next door, one of whom happened to be from Panguitch in my county. She was surprised to find out I was the niece of her brother's Frank's good friend Kent. He and Kent were in the same year of medical school and Zelda said they were talking about establishing a practice together when the time came. <br />
Zelda, a warm affectionate girl, was trying to recover from what she regarded as a humiliating experience taking her placement tests. She scored so low in nearly all categories that she was forced to take remedial classes in all of them to stay in school, but she said bravely that she had always intended to be a home economics teacher so she would do whatever she had to do to stay to the university. She bemoaned the fact that Panguitch Hi had not prepared her well for the University as she had never gotten anything but "A's" in her life!<br />
I had scored high enough in all my English tests that I got into the class for top English students, but I pointed out to her that I had scored a very low 14% in math, and had not done so well in geography and history either, which reflected the inferior teaching I had experienced in those classes at West Hi. I could have had a better history teacher in Miss Woodside had I stayed to Bear River High school. I had no doubt that she was one of the outstanding American history teachers in the state. I loved history so that was my loss.<br />
Norma, her roommate, was an attractive blond from the fishing town of Seldovia in Alaska, so she was able to tell us some fascinating stories about working in a fish canning factory in Cordova. In fact, she missed Alaska so much that she decided to return and finish college there after her freshman year. <br />
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Zelda, Norma, Darlene, and I became fast friends that year. Norma and I even went to visit Zelda in Panguitch a weekend or so. Zelda was in love with Panguitch, the county seat. She especially adored Zion's National Park.<br />
I tried to persuade her that Boulder, in the eastern part of the county, was just as beautiful, but she was not at all interested in spending any time visiting me. I came to believe that the citizens of Panguitch really did view themselves as superior to the rest of the people in this relatively poor county. But still spectacularly beautiful.<br />
Zelda was one of the most affectionate girls I have ever met. All the girlfriends I had had previously had been quite reserved. She was very popular with girls, and in fact, told me years later that after she became a teacher girls got crushes on her and it troubled her. She wondered if she invited such feelings. I told her I thought she was just an unusually warm person, but I didn't think that meant that was anything to worry about. <br />
That spring however she ran into my marked aversion to pledging a sorority. I stated quite strongly I did not believe in them, that this was a way that more popular girls discriminated against others.<br />
At Bear River High School, the clique had girls in it who would go around claiming to be one of the 'popular thirty'. I knew without even having to look on the list I had not made it into the popular thirty.<br />
Aunt Neta had talked too often about how popular her boys had been. She seemed to think striving to be popular was important to become a success in life.<br />
Book worms like myself who had been called 'two eyes' because of my thick glasses just might never qualify I wanted to point out to her. If I had told her that, she would probably have advised me to quit reading, it was not doing me any good!<br />
Anyway Zelda did not join probably only because we were all still good friends, but after we parted ways at the end of the year I heard that she pledged a sorority late, and after that she just sort of forgot about me. I always felt that trying to go along with some of my ideas stressed and strained her, and that was the main reason our friendship never made it beyond the first year. She came from a family of 12 kids, and what with her sorority sisters and students, she would not have been able to keep up our friendship very well either. <br />
I did not pledge any sorority but found a room in the most unpopular sorority house which I rented only if I did not have to join. I decided I would study the sorority girls that year and see if I was missing anything. I rented a room there because my roommate, Darlene, joined, and she told me that they had a good cook and had not been able to recruit enough pledges to fill the Phi Mu house. I needed to be very close to the campus so I would not be in danger if I walked home at night from rehearsal, if I was lucky enough to get more parts in plays.<br />
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My roommate at the Phi Mu house called herself Torchy. She informed me she was the daughter of the head of the psychology department, and she admitted that she lived to torture this man for the presumption that he really understood daughters like her.<br />
She had the most beautiful strawberry blond hair and did not hesitate to borrow my most attractive clothes even though she had more. In fact, she wore my new black velvet strapless sheath I bought for Christmas before I did. She looked so spectacular in it, I could not turn her down. I was just glad to get it back without a fight.<br />
She said she had had any number of nervous breakdowns, so she was the first to introduce to me up close what a girl diagnosed with mental illness looked and acted like. I was very glad I had known her as her experiences helped me to get through what happened to me later. By then she was long gone from the university. I thought she had father issues just as I did but I was not able to be frank with her as she was with me. That was my problem. I felt I had been completely silenced and it seemed to become more risky rather than less to break my silence. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to know what secrets I was concealing.<br />
Every attempt I made to speak about them some way or another was thwarted. Starting with Lowell Lees, the head of the theater department, who disappointed me very much when I took a chance and wrote a paper in the first class I took from him that I thought would provide an opening to talking about my hidden experiences. We were invited to discuss our pasts in a personal way, but he was not the least bit encouraging in response to what I wrote. The way he reacted to that critical paper was the beginning of my disillusionment with university life.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-52899726375627031872011-07-22T10:08:00.000-07:002013-11-29T12:10:23.633-08:00Memoir: Chapter 39: First date before I leave for the University life<div style="text-align: left;">
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My date was a cute guy, just a year older, tall, dark, and handsome. Just right for the first real date I had ever been on in my life. I recall that he came to pick me up in Salt Gulch in his truck where I was working that day tromping hay and cooking for the hay crew. He drove over from Escalante where he was from. I don't know what we did, but I was in love for a little while. I went off to school and he started dating someone else. Alvin was always a big flirt.<br />
I was very interested in him because he was the son of Varney's brother, my Aunt Nethella's beloved first husband, who had been killed in an accident sliding off the haystack in the barn. She had been unable to see anyone else for years, and all who knew him said he was an outstanding man.<br />
My summer in Boulder had been very satisfying that year. The sisters at home were getting old enough to do a lot of work. I turned seventeen in July, Margie, sixteen, and LaRae was twelve, Ann ten, and Linda nine. We had been able to get through our summer bottling season in fine fashion with so many hands and an electric stove. It looked as though Mother would soon be able to make good on her intention never to do a speck of housework again with so many daughters. <br />
I was impressed with how neat the house always looked now with the younger sisters taking turns cleaning it up. I noticed that Ann especially was a good worker around the house. She was always willing to volunteer to go help Dad, too, so more than likely after I was gone, she would become his right hand daughter help. <br />
Margie was going to Bear River High school one more year and then she was coming back home to take the bus to Escalante high. LaRae was already eager to take the bus to Escalante.<br />
The younger sisters were all sewing up a storm, too. Daddy had told them he would buy them any material they desired if they would just sew their own clothes. You would have thought he was related to a professional sewing teacher. I had been impervious to such bribes, but I could see LaRae was going to have a very cute wardrobe, thanks to her speed when she sat down to a sewing machine.<br />
LaRae was showing signs of being a talented artist, too. She even declared that is what she intended to be. She had always been the funny one in the family, and her cartoons showed it. There is always somebody in a family other members look to to make witty comments, and in our family that sister was LaRae. Uncle Reed had been the witty one in Daddy's family, despite his insanity or maybe because of it. Uncle Kent was the scintillating wit in the Wilson family. The family wit is usually so funny nobody else bothers to joke until it becomes necessary after the family has grown up and split apart, if anything funny is ever going to be said again. <br />
My sister Ann was the appreciator as well as the family work horse. She laughed at all of LaRae's witticisms, and she loved the stories I made up to tell her. She just appreciated and appreciated and I think she had already decided she would probably become a teacher like Aunt Neta and Aunt Nethella, as she would be a natural to bring out other people's talents.<br />
Linda was so busy walking on her hands and turning somersaults I am sure she entertained ideas of running away to join the circus. I thought she could definitely be a performer of some sort since she had never been able to talk without sitting high up in the door jamb like a monkey. She had started jumping off increasingly higher edifices, first the car, then the porch, and somebody kept her from jumping off the barn where she had lost some brand new shoes and made Mother very mad.<br />
She was already having to be rescued from ledges, trying to keep up with LaRae, three years older, who was also the family daredevil. LaRae never got ledged. It was just those who were too young to follow in her footsteps that did. <br />
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I had gotten disturbed because Mother informed me during the summer that Daddy had agreed to pay for my room and board at the University only if I studied to become a teacher or a secretary. "A secretary?" I moaned. Nobody could even read my handwriting, so that was out. Even if I learned shorthand, I would not be able to read it. That left becoming a teacher.<br />
I reminded Mother that I had lost my job as a Sunday School teacher because the parents decided I was criticizing Mormon teachings. Teachers were not strictly expected to be good active Mormons, but it was greatly to be desired. I had a way of calling attention to whatever I said. I suppose it was the actress in me. I tried to make what ever I said interesting if not fascinating. And people were already implying I was too opinionated and outspoken for my own good. <br />
Wouldn't that be cute if I lost my job the first year just the way I lost my Sunday school job? Nobody in Utah would ever hire me again. Mother thought I was just borrowing trouble worrying about such possibilities. But I was mad because Daddy was laying down the law about what I was even to become!<br />
"I told Daddy I wanted to be a writer!" I snapped. I thought the very qualities that might put me in jeopardy as a teacher of the young were just what a good writer needed. <br />
"Oh, he doesn't think that's practical at all," said Mother. "Nobody makes a living as a writer."<br />
"Oh, yes," I said. "He had to quit studying law and become a rancher because they can drink. He couldn't be anything else, but I can't come home and run a ranch. Look at what Aunt Nethella is doing. She is trying to run Grandpa's ranch, and she has to depend entirely on the hired men now that he is old."<br />
"I know," said Mother. She agreed that life was rough for a woman. Men were always bossing them around and telling them what they could and couldn't do. But she advised me that I had better take education classes so I'd be qualified to teach, just in case. Nobody could stop me from writing if I wanted to, but I should be able to do something to earn a living after I had graduated from the University if I expected Daddy to pay for my expenses.<br />
Well, at least I wouldn't have to go out and find a part time job and could maybe try out for some parts in in some plays. In fact, that is the first thing I did after I secured a room in the freshman dorm back in Salt Lake. I noticed on campus tryouts were being held for a play that was going on the road to outlying towns and cities. The notice said it was part of a children's play program, the famous Shakespearean director, Lowell Lees, was initiating. When I got to the tryouts, Lowell Lees, a slim spritely man with an intelligent look in his eyes asked me to read for the Great Aunt. I groaned. <br />
There it was again, my fat nose earning me a chance to try out for a character part instead of the young romantic lead I longed for. I was just as stunned as anybody else when it was announced that I had won the largest part in the play, which was called, "The Great Aunt Sits on the Floor". My picture was taken for the Salt Lake Tribune. It looked as though I was off to a great start at the University of Utah in theater when I had just barely gotten there.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-8738183216304767382011-07-20T16:18:00.000-07:002013-11-29T09:37:18.253-08:00Memoir: Chapter 38: My horse Blackie falls down three times on one of my cattle drives, once with me on him!When I came home from school after I graduated I was as mad at Daddy as I had ever been. He had not attended my graduation from high school when I was just sixteen years old. I was not surprised he tried to wiggle out of that but it was the smart eleck remark he made that bothered me which Mother told me, who had attended. She ordered him to come but he wouldn't do it. He said, "I always knew she would graduate!"<br />
I felt he had not come close to comprehending the sacrifice I had made that year to work for my room and board for a couple who left quite a bit to be desired as wholesome guardians. Besides that, West High school had 2,000 students and only a junior and senior class, so I had made it nearly to the top student of my class as salutatorian. I thought if only Miss Nelson had let me write my own speech and Daddy had attended, I would have said something that made him sit up and take notice. He thought I had been thoroughly subdued, but he did not know how the many indignities I had suffered throughout my life as his daughter rankled. I was like a little volcano building steam. Sooner or later I was going to blow. <br />
Daddy I could see as soon as I got home to Boulder was mighty harassed with all the work he was having to do with the additional ranch property. He asked me if I wouldn't go over to Salt Gulch and help out a couple of days He was still gathering cattle from the winter range in Sand Creek and there were other tasks that needed doing around that ranch.<br />
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He had saddled his horse and went out west on the Sand Creek trail to bring a fairly small bunch of cattle home. Pretty soon he came racing back and said he needed me to go do a cowpunching job for him. Blackie, the horse his hired man favored, was over there for some reason, so he saddled him for me to ride. He said that he had to take me out to where he had left three old cows. As we rode out there to he told me that when he went back to get the last of the cattle he had been gathering yesterday, instead of trailing into the ranch, the three old cows got tired and laid down, and before he could get back out there this morning the other nine head split and went off toward Sand Creek. He said another cow was probably leading them on a short cut to the mountain. <br />
Cattle don't know they have to come home to get tagged so they will not be trespassed on the mountain range. They just think get to the mountain anyway they can. Daddy wanted me to track the runaway cattle up Sand Creek and turn them around and bring them back down the creek. I was to take the trail back over to where the three old cows were poking along, pick them up, and bring them all home. He said the old cows would probably still be there when I came back with the runaway cattle. I asked him why he didn't take those cows home with him, and he snapped that he had too much to do on the ranch and didn't have time to trail some old slow cows.<br />
I noticed after he left that Blackie was beginning to act logy. The hired man preferred to ride him for some reason, and probably had not traded horses enough to give him some good days of rest. Usually a good cowhand's best horse was never that logy. I was surprised. <br />
Daddy's horses were usually spirited and fun to ride. Well, Blackie was so rode out probably from the spring round up on the other ranches in Boulder that a dangerous thing happened. We came out of Sand Creek up a sandy wallow, and I will be darned if Blackie did not fall down with me. I felt him falling just in time to pull my feet out of the stirrups. When he hit the ground I stepped off him. I thanked God I'd had on my good cowboy boots that kept my foot from going through the stirrup. I always wore them if I had to do any riding. <br />
This fall was exactly why it was always wise to drive cattle in pairs so if one rider gets hurt, the other one can ride for help.<br />
I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had not been able to jump off in time. I could have laid out there all day if the horse fell on me before Daddy came to find me. Somewhat shaken, I mounted Blackie again and kept tracking the runaway cattle. It seemed like I had to ride quite a ways north to the mountain before I ran into them. I did not dare push Blackie too hard trying to catch up with them.<br />
Finally I sighted them. I managed to head them off, as they were tired, turned them around and headed them back down the creek. I was moseying along down Sand Creek thinking how far I was going to have to drive these cattle to get back to the Sand Creek trail. <br />
I don't know what madness overcame me, but I suddenly decided I would just take this herd of nine animals, including quite a few heifers, up over the top of the long bench next to our ranch. I figured we were coming onto where it was located, and within a very short time I could have these cattle back to the Salt Gulch ranch. And I would not have to make that long drive. Which later I thought showed I was too impatient to be a cowpuncher for life. I had better find another profession. <br />
Well, the nine head of cattle got rejuvenated with the chance to take off in still another direction, and pretty soon they had run up to the top of the hill which proved to be steeper than I expected. That's when I noticed that one heifer was lingering behind, completely exhausted. I had killed a heifer down on King's Bench by pushing her too hard on the trail to Sinking Water when I was twelve. She fell into a deep canyon. I sure didn't want to kill another one. Daddy cussed about that one all the way home.<br />
I jumped off Blackie and leading him, I started pushing that heifer up over the last little incline. She still had enough strength in her and enough fear of me to make it to the top. I mounted Blackie and we crossed the top of the bench quickly, me in a panic wondering where the rest of the cattle had gone. I finally caught sight of them clear on the other side already tumbling down some steep shale hills that were not meant to be traversed by cattle or horses either. The trembling heifer went tumbling after the rest of the herd, but I got off and started leading Blackie down the steep shale incline.<br />
Just in time as pretty soon he fell down, too. Oh my God, if something happened to this trained cow horse as a result of me taking this short cut, I just as well leave home, Daddy would be so mad.<br />
Valuable trained horses regularly got lamed by falling in this rough country. I held my breath as Blackie got up. He seemed okay but pretty soon he fell down another steep shale slope!<br />
I was praying by then, "Lord, please don't let anything happen to Blackie, and I will never take a short cut again." <br />
The sun was just starting to sink behind the western hills when the cattle ended up safe in my father's fields, coming in way to the north. Well, at least I had saved myself a long cattle drive, and both Blackie and I were okay. <br />
I finally found Daddy and rode up, meaning to tell him about Blackie's first fall, but not about his second or third one. Once he heard I had found the runaway herd and they were back in his field, he interrupted me and asked if I had picked up the three old cows.<br />
I swear I had forgotten them completely! "Didn't they come home?" I stammered.<br />
"Course they didn't!" yelled Daddy. "In fact, as soon as they get rested up, they will head over to Sand Creek to the mountain. You are going to have to go after them, now!"<br />
Yes, he sent me back out on the Sand Creek Trail after those old cows. It was almost pitch dark before I found them. I was just lucky they were still on the trail and not headed for Sand Creek. I rode along thinking about what an incredibly hard driving dad I had, when a silent dark shadow on horseback joined me.<br />
He never said a word. We just rode along driving the cows together, like two tired cowpunchers after a long day on the trail. Too tired to talk, but satisfied that another hard day of ranching and punching cows was done. <br />
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Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-15310803984762818462011-07-18T12:49:00.000-07:002013-11-29T09:28:40.806-08:00Memoir: Chapter 37: Dumbing down of high school kids aggravates me in a big Salt Lake High SchoolI began to detect a systematic dumbing down of high school kids at West which aggravated me because I had gone to Salt Lake in the hopes of going to a really good high school. I did not know if it was because West Hi was where minorities went or if it was a Utah thing. Whatever blacks had been intrepid enough to move to Salt Lake where Mormon doctrine kept them from holding the priesthood lived mostly in the South High school district. But I suspected that East High School where the majority of the wealthy citizens lived would not be a whole lot better.<br />
As I was tediously copying animal body parts out of a book in biology, I wondered if I ought to rebel, but the thought of missing college kept me from becoming a protester in high school before I had done everything the conventional way I could do without getting too disgusted. Nearly all my classes were so easy, they were downright boring. <br />
The history teacher would simply write parts of the next chapter on the black board, which we would copy and study for our tests. We could even look at our notes if we wanted to. I heard the history teacher was a former coach so he was not expected to be a good teacher, having failed at coaching but still needing a job to support his family. The only good teacher I had was in my English college prep class. She drilled us in grammar all year, but she did not allow us to write anything, so I got no chance to express my creative urges or my ability to think in any class in high school.<br />
I wrote synopses of short stories for my junior English teacher, who seemed aggravated to think she had to read more of mine than she expected. She had not put a limit on how many short story reports we could do, but she acted as though she was going to have to in order to prevent an overflow from a student like I was. <br />
I was even getting aggravated with Miss Nelson, my speech and drama teacher, who was beginning to act very controlling when it came to picking out pieces to take to the meets around the state. She practically assigned a piece to me to memorize that I thought had little merit about a mean old man. I was asked to do that piece everywhere, and I always felt uncomfortable doing it as though I were demeaning myself.<br />
She practically wrote my speech for me after she urged me to try out for a regional speech competition. I entered it because I thought I would have the chance to express a few of my own thoughts on the subject. Miss Nelson was so in the habit of thinking for her students that she ignored my cool reactions to such 'help' from her, but the time I really got angry at her was when I was slated to give a speech to the whole high school as the salutatorian. I had barely missed being valedictorian, but I thought the girl whose grades proved to be higher than mine deserved to win, since her A's were in chemistry and math. I don't know if anyone helpfully wrote her speech for her, but I was completely disillusioned when Miss Nelson, as my adviser, told me not to worry about the content as she would be writing the speech for me!<br />
Was she really that afraid to give one of her top students the opportunity to express her own thoughts?<br />
It looked like it. She wasn't going to be able to accompany me everywhere the rest of my life writing my speeches for me, if I ever got another chance to give one!<br />
I didn't think this was a very good sign. It looked as though I was going to have a tougher time than I thought surfacing any of my own conclusions let alone telling anyone what had happened to me at the hands of predators. I had found it impossible to tell anyone up to now, and these dark secrets were eating away at the very fabric of my being. They were going to have to be told some day before they gave me such a soul sickness I could not be happy. <br />
But when and where? At the University? Now that I had finished high school while still being completely suppressed, I would have to find a way to talk about the harsh realities of life in probably the last school I would ever attend, the University of Utah. I hoped that the English professors there appreciated great literature enough to realize that the writers were very often the ones who called attention to what ordinary society always tended to suppress. I was still reading a great many books, many of them written by the masters. I wasn't going to miss any writer's work that illuminated some dark heavy problem to the rest of the world. <br />
That would be my mission as a writer I thought. But in order to get my stories out there I would have to find people willing to publish difficult material. I wondered if I would find anyone willing in Utah to take those risks. In high school I had encountered more men willing to take advantage of the young if they could. I was not lacking in predators to write about. <br />
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Every summer when I came home I studied my dad's cowboy culture as an example of men who took advantage of ignorant women and made them feel they did not deserve honesty. I noted that my dad had hired another cowboy to help him on the new ranch property. The new man was married to a strange little woman who I doubted ever questioned anything he did, so however he and my father acted, her husband would never be challenged by his wife. <br />
At least the new man left us daughters strictly alone. He always tried to act as distant with me as possible. But I noted that when a gay photographer became great friends with my dad, this hired man always went along with my dad and him to help cook and show him the sights on their week long treks into the canyon country. The photographer took photos of my dad and the hired man looking especially happy. I asked Mother if she was suspicious of what my dad and the photographer might be doing, they had become such devoted friends. She said, "Oh no, he is gay, he told me so!!" <br />
I guess she thought I meant did she wonder if my dad and he might find some women to party with when they were gone! Even when I said what I did it did not seem to occur to her that my dad and the photographer might have a physical bond. <br />
This happened again when a Hollywood filmmaker came to town who my dad was soon taking about scouting for locations. Mother tried to take him, the filmmaker reported to me, but he 'liked my dad', so he said he told my mother he had become impotent! Which was not true he laughed making eyes at me. He seemed to assume that I knew my dad was bisexual. I pretended I didn't know because I was not going to discuss this matter with a Hollywood filmmaker when I had not discussed it with anyone else up to that point. But I was always suspicious, noting whatever my dad and his partners were getting away with, hidden in the shadows of their wives' ignorance. <br />
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It might take a long time for Mother to wise up, but at least she would still be alive. The most dangerous thing a wife or even a male victim could do, I had already discovered, was accuse one of these men of hiding the fact they were 'connected'. I looked on it as somewhat like being in the Mafia. Perhaps men in the Mafia also kept that kind of secret. What might make the men look bad and prove to be a disadvantage in their dealings with society was not to be discussed. I could not even imagine the trouble I would have gotten into with my dad had I accused him. I would have put myself at high risk, so I didn't do it. <br />
I just kept notes. If I wrote anything in my journals about it, I made sure my handwriting was illegible and I periodically burned them, I became that paranoid.<br />
This still remains a loaded issue today as I write these memoirs, and I am 80 years old, so I don't think we have solved all the problems connected to this issue by any means. The struggle is still ongoing because men with homosexual tendencies are still marrying women and hiding that fact. I have always thought people who had the kind of experiences with shadow men I did needed to write about them, in order to further progress.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-86417197691203910832011-07-16T11:23:00.000-07:002013-11-29T07:19:16.640-08:00Memoir: Chapter 36: Fun times in Escalante before I had to go back to school and live with strangers It is funny what sticks in your memory years after the fact. I did have my fears realized when I went back to Salt Lake and found some strangers who needed a hired girl. Mrs. K hired me who was a little bird like woman who said she had raised canaries all her life. She said they took so much time she thought she could use a girl to do light house work for her room and board. Mr. K was away at the time on his shift as a conductor on the railroad.<br />
I thought Mrs. K was as harmless as one of her canaries and moved in, but as soon as I laid eyes on Mr. K I knew he was different. I came to think Mr. K had been a very dangerous man when he was younger but now he was like an old tiger who didn't have any teeth. He tried to molest me under the table whenever I joined them in a game of cards, but he wasn't determined enough for me to really fear him.<br />
I thought if I left to get away from him, I would just have to test out a new couple. I decided if Mrs. K had been able to tolerate him for over 45 years, I could put up with for 9 months. Besides that he still worked for the railroad and spent half his life away from home, waiting to work his way home on the incoming train.<br />
I might have left if he had been retired but as it was, my time with the Ks was still going to be shadowed by his ancient habits of exploiting women. I even suspected that he visited the woman in private who came to play cards with the Ks two or three nights a week. She was a pleasant widow quite a few years younger than Mrs. K. I could not imagine him not molesting her under the table as he tried to do me. It would have been easy for him to visit her coming to and fro from work, too, as he had Mrs. K so well trained she would have accepted anything he said or did without question.<br />
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In the meantime in the summers, Margie and I went to all the dances in Escalante and everywhere else we could find one. Boulder always had a dance on the 4th of July and there was the Mutton Fry and dance in the old CCC camp up at Posey Lake we would not have missed for anything. Connie's date came from Panguitch one year who happened to be a very funny guy. He fell into the lake off a boat and kept Connie and me laughing all night talking about how dangerous it was to leave home and go over the mountain for a dance among such wild primitive people as we ignorant natives were on this side of the mountain. In fact, this guy thought so well of himself I was afraid he was going to break Connie's heart when someone he thought was better came along. <br />
I had not realized that people living in the county seat of Panguitch considered themselves better than the people in the other towns, even though we were all from the same county. I was having enough trouble finding boyfriends in the city without being rejected by one from Panguitch.<br />
I thought Connie was very brave to keep trying to land this guy for a husband. But if he already thought he was too good for her, wouldn't that make marriage rather difficult? I thought he was the main reason Connie had made up her mind to go to the University of Utah when the time came for her to go. I suspected she hoped to impress him. <br />
I tried to suggest to her that the University of Utah required high school prep classes if you were to do well. I feared she might be disappointed, as I doubted if she could have picked a harder school. I had heard that you had to take tests to determine the level of your high school education and smarts, too, and that could be so disconcerting to country kids who got low scores they might give up on a higher education altogether. <br />
Margie was talking about changing high schools so she could go to high school in Utah. She was anxious for them to start busing the Boulder kids to Escalante high school.<br />
I told her I would not be in any hurry to go to Escalante if she intended to go to the University of Utah. I knew she would get better college prep classes at Bear River High , if she came back to Utah. <br />
High school students from Bear River very often went to Logan to college. Margie decided she would ask Aunt Neta if she was willing to take in another niece, as the parents had not been able to secure busing to Escalante. Aunt Neta said yes, and as I expected, she and Margie got along famously. Margie had always declared she would be a seamstress, until she found out they were starting to phase sewing teachers out of high school. So she decided to become a nurse, instead. In the meantime, she was soon sewing everything Aunt Neta asked of her students and very well, too. The other students recognized a born seamstress when they saw one and elected her president of the Homemakers, so when the parents in Boulder finally did secure busing to Escalante the following year, Margie decided to go another year at Garland so she could attend the convention in Kansas City as the Bear River Homemakers President. Aunt Neta could not have been more pleased and she and Margie remained good friends the rest of their lives.<br />
I was afraid Connie might think I was trying to keep her from attending the best school, so I stopped discouraging her from going to the U of U. She had mentioned business school or perhaps going to stewardess school so she could work for the airlines. At any rate, she would not be graduating from Escalante Hi for another year, so we would cross that bridge when we came to it. I would have been attending the U of U a year by then, so I would know a lot more about what she was up against than I did now. <br />
Connie, Marion, my cousin who was Uncle Reed's oldest daughter, Margie, and I had gone on several camping trips together, and when we did we were very apt to get into a heated argument over religion. Connie and Marion fell naturally into the good Mormon camp and Margie in spite of herself showed the influence of the King skeptics. I was a little alarmed about these big arguments we started having. I was afraid they might spell the end of a good friendship between all of us eventually. <br />
Connie hadn't seemed particularly religious to me up until then, but I found out when the subject of religion came up she was a staunch believer as was our cousin Marion. <br />
I already knew Margie and I did not get along most of the time at home. We might not stay friends either. As long as we were having fun we could keep from fighting, but wouldn't our basic disagreements about anything and everything keep us drifting apart even if we were sisters? I was prepared to lose friends on a regular basis, and even the friendship of cousins I wasn't around very much, but I had already been separated more from my sisters than I wanted to be. I just hoped that this early separation would not make it too difficult for us to have a good relationship down the road, even if we didn't share the same interests, even if Margie declared herself a homemaker and I didn't. <br />
I had always planned to be a writer. For years Margie refused to read books because I did. That was carrying childhood reactions to an older sister's interests quite far, since when she finally did start to read, she was perfectly smart. All she had done was lose the opportunity to benefit from the wisdom found in books at an early age. <br />
With parents like ours, I had always thought we daughters needed to read books. Otherwise they might prove to be bad influences. I was always saying to myself I am not going to act like them. I found my examples of how to act in books, but I wondered where Margie was finding her examples. Well, Aunt Neta was a better one, but she was inclined to be a bit judgmental. <br />
Once when I had been idly naming the books I had read in a book cupboard Aunt Nethella had left there, Aunt Neta flew into me and pecked me good for bragging. I wondered how hostile she might be to Aunt Nethella, the English teacher, who owned these books. Was this hostility generated by her sister or by books? Margie and I were very similar in our contrasting interests to Aunt Neta and Aunt Nethella. <br />
I never dared argue with Aunt Neta as I would have done with my dad. She seemed unable to brook any disagreement at all from poor nieces she took in. She did not realize that was the reason I left. I couldn't live there four years never able to express a single doubt about the religion, alone, to say nothing of talking about a problem in the family, like the alcoholism of her brother for example. <br />
What was it with her? I could see now a person could be irrational even if they did not drink. They could be downright unreasonable, but if they were old, what could you do about it? If I had thought she was approachable at all, I would have stayed. I didn't think she was.<br />
I hoped Margie's temperament was different than Aunt Neta's. We had always quarreled. I attributed some of Margie's irritability to her asthma attacks. So I always cut her some slack. Her wheezing even caused me to feel irritable. I am ashamed to say I would sometimes chide her, "Quit sneezing!" As if she could help it. Her wheezing scared me, to tell the truth, so I hated to hear the signs of one of her attacks coming on. <br />
Well, it was good that Margie and Aunt Neta could have the chance to become friends. Margie did not react to her at all the way I had. <br />
Life in the family of five sisters was getting more complex as we grew older. I was always thinking about how what we were doing was going to affect our relationships. I was glad Margie was going to Garland for high school. I might see her more than I had when she was in Washington with Aunt Vesta for sure, but she liked Aunt Vesta, too, and seemed to get along well there. I thought she was going to make a good nurse because she knew all about how her little cousin Jim had had to have his blood exchanged when he was a baby because his mother, Aunt Vesta, had R-H negative blood and was allergic to her husband's blood which was positive. The blood types of the parents being different caused some of their children to have severe difficulties if all their blood was not transfused. In fact, they would die if not treated. Jim was a miracle baby who had survived the transfusions for the condition that might have contributed to the death of his parents' first born. He did not seem to have suffered any impairment either.<br />
Margie had apparently asked a lot of questions to be so knowledgeable about what had happened to our little cousin Jim. She said Aunt Vesta desperately wanted more than one child, but was almost afraid to try to have another one for fear of this clash between the blood types.<br />
I had never heard of such a thing. A couple whose blood was not compatible. Margie also had R-H negative blood, too, which probably caused her to take even more of an interest in Aunt Vesta's troubles. If her husband to be were to have a certain blood type she could have the same trouble with her children! So now she not only was prone to asthma but had R-H negative blood! Margie probably needed to become a nurse so she could keep better track of herself. <br />
I didn't tell any of the family about Mr. K, now an old weak molester, any more than I told them about the others. I seemed to have been resigned to the fact that there would always be molesters around for the young to contend with. What else did Mother and Dad expect when they sent their daughters out in the world to live with strangers. I expected the worst rather than the best, so I was prepared. Hired girls had to take their chances. Beggars could not be choosers.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-46889110743404495292011-07-13T12:37:00.001-07:002013-11-28T10:15:29.485-08:00Memoir: Chapter 35: Goodbye to Grandma's place and hello to Giant Slew ranch, a property Daddy bought where the work helped him cut back on his drinking at last<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I met so many Wilson relatives dropping in to see Grandma that I had never known before I thought my year of staying with her was well worth it. Her sister Janette from Tropic brought her beautiful granddaughter who was trying out for Miss Utah and stayed several days. Aunt Janette was very unlike Aunt Sue, Grandma's card playing partner, who lived just down the street. She was very religious as were some of Grandmother's younger brothers. Aunt Sue and Grandma as the oldest and the youngest sisters did what they pleased. Aunt Sue still pretended to sell real estate. Mother said she remembered Grandma and her sister Julia used to come to the family reunions and squaw wrestle very year. Which means they got down on the ground and tried to throw each other using one leg. <br />
Anyway Aunt Anne told me when I got ready to leave that the family had decided it was time to start taking turns having Grandma live for a few months with them. She said she hoped I would be able to find another place to live all right but every time I went somewhere Grandma would call up and fret about my being gone. <br />
I said I understood and that I was sure I could find some other place to stay so not to worry. I thanked her for making room for me in their lives. <br />
Cheryl, my beautiful cousin, was to move into the nurses' dorm very soon. Poor Uncle Hyrum was not expected to live but a few more weeks. Once he was gone and Grandma was alone, the big old fashioned house on Gordon Place would be sold. With two entrances in front, it had probably been built in the days of polygamy. There would have been living quarters for at least three wives. <br />
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So everybody's lives on Gordon Place were about to change. I went home to a change there too with my dad buying another ranch property in upper Boulder. The rancher owner was getting old and peckish and suddenly decided he had to sell before he up and died. My dad got Grandpa to sign with him and jumped in to buy the ranch. Mother said he thought he could pay off the ranch fast if he bought it when cattle prices were high. <br />
None of the old rancher's nephews even got the chance to buy the ranch. They had been coming there for years learning to cowboy, but none of them had money at the ready, so their loss it appeared was my dad's gain. Most of the nephews had had to go in the service to defend the country. There were some hard feelings at first over my dad's opportunity because he had been just the right age to escape the draft. <br />
His older brother was drafted to fight in World War I, but my dad had just gotten too old to fight in World War II.<br />
It seemed like every opportunity my dad got to buy a ranch property caused some hard feelings in somebody. As for me, when Daddy told me he wanted me to go up to the ranch so he could show me around, all I could wonder when I saw it was why a man who already owned Sinkhole ranch would buy Giant Slew ranch, too. <br />
Straight out from the ranch house the property contained this giant slew running down the middle of it, starting with a spring that fed it. I walked out a little ways on it, and it shook like a big bowl of jelly. Scared the hell out of me. It was a very strange feeling to have the ground jiggle under you. <br />
Daddy said to be sure to stay on the narrow road someone had built across it to the hayfields. Creating a solid base for a road in that slew must have required a great deal of work. I never did find out how they did it, but if you drove off the road, whatever vehicle you were in would start sinking. <br />
I know because the first time Margie drove our jeep across it, she decided it was safe to go off the road when we got close to the house. The jeep sunk so deep in the slew we had to go ask the neighboring rancher if he could please bring his tractor over and pull us out. <br />
We knew Daddy would have a spell if we waited to ask him because he had warned us not to do what we just did. The neighboring rancher, knowing Daddy, took pity on us and pulled us out. <br />
I was to encounter that slew in an even more dangerous way that same spring after I came home when Daddy told me he wanted me to go up to the ranch with him to help do something with some cattle. First he gave me a skittish little bay mare that had belonged to the former owners to ride. He said Wissy was now my horse, but to be very careful when I was driving cattle on her as she had been badly gored in the side by a cow with long horns. So if a cow with horns got anywhere near her she would jump sideways so high, a rider taken by surprise could be pitched off. <br />
I thought Wissy acted pretty skittish without even a cow with horns in sight. I wondered how long it had been since she had been ridden. Daddy started toward the big slew to take care of his cattle. The pasture did not have a road leading to it. It looked like he intended for us to cross the slew! I pulled Wissy up. "We aren't going to cross this slew on these horses are we?" I asked in frank disbelief. <br />
If a jeep could sink to the hub caps that close to the house, what about horses I was thinking.<br />
Daddy said airily, "Oh don't worry. These horses were born and raised here on this ranch. They have been crossing this slew to the pasture all their lives!"<br />
"But I haven't been!" I said sharply. I frankly started begging, "Daddy, let me ride down there outside the ranch. I will meet you to the pasture gate."<br />
"We haven't got time for that!" snapped Daddy. "Come on." He always hated cowgirls related to him acting like craven cowards on horseback. <br />
Well, we soon came to a place in the upper part of the slew where the water from the spring could be seen openly pooling. The horses plunged into that part, lunging as though their very lives depended on it. As for me, I had not been that scared in a long time. <br />
In fact, I could not even enjoy the work with the cattle which I usually did, I was so worried about coming back through that slew. <br />
Well, we made it back alive, and I resolved that the next time Daddy had some work to do with cattle up to Giant Slew ranch I would have something else very important I had to do instead. I was never going to ride a horse across the Giant Slew again, and I never did!Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-10916190722173996402011-07-11T14:36:00.000-07:002013-11-29T09:07:03.935-08:00Memoir: Chapter 34: Visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wilson and little Uncle Bill and playing Chinese checkers<div style="text-align: left;">
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I would go down once in a while to visit Grandma and Grandpa Wilson. Grandpa, little Uncle Bill, and I would play Chinese checkers. Bill was doing better in Salt Lake than he had in Boulder with the kinder gentler people in Grandma's ward in church who were more like she was, with lots of patience which slower kids need. Grandma had told me the Boulder kids made fun of Bill and Ben both. Ben was his best friend who lived just a block away, and their insults made Bill feel bad. As for as I knew, this was the main reason Grandma urged Grandpa to sell the small ranch, so they could take Bill back to the city. <br />
Boulder was a more dangerous place for kids, I thought, too. Ben, Bill's friend, was already deceased from a hunting accident he sustained when he went duck hunting with a bunch of eager kids. A kid in his excitement at seeing wild ducks fired a gun before he had entirely raised it up, and a slug went into Ben's head and killed him instantly.<br />
Just a few months before I happened to have gotten in on another accident Ben had with his dad's runaway team. I was driving a herd of cattle up the road to the mountain on Sorly when the team and wagon went thundering past. I saw Ben clinging to the hay pole on the wagon the team going so fast he could not jump off. I turned Sorly around and chased after them not knowing if I could do anything to prevent Ben getting hurt.<br />
Just as I about caught up to him, the wagon broke in two pieces and when the yoke fell to the ground, it slowed the horses down enough Ben was able to turn them off the road and jump off.<br />
I turned Sorly around and raced back up the road to catch up with my cattle for fear they got lost before I had driven them up on the mountain as far as Daddy said to take them.<br />
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Ben was only twelve when he was killed.<br />
I had always worried about Grandpa buying a rogue Jersey bull when he was in Boulder, which he had to keep chained to a post as this bull would try to charge anyone who came near him. Grandpa had been able to get him cheap probably because he was mean, but he was hoping to expand his herd of pure Jersey milk cows which gave the thickest cream. Food loving Grandpa naturally loved delicious rich cream.<br />
But I had nightmares about that bull somehow breaking loose and killing someone. He could have killed Grandpa when he was trying to handle him, breeding him to the cows. I had never seen such a mean bull. He had it in for humans. And the more he had to live on a short chain the more dangerous he was going to get. <br />
I just did not think city life that I had witnessed so far was as dangerous as country life. But every time I saw little Uncle Bill, I could not help but think about his best friend laying on the couch in his mother's house, cold and dead, after he had been shot. I recall her holding his feet and saying, "but his feet are so cold, they are so cold."<br />
His mother was my friend Barbara's oldest sister. I don't think there is any more raw grief than that of a mother who has lost her first born son.<br />
But I was glad Mother had decided to park me at her grandmother's house instead of at her own mother's and father's. I am sure she remembered her dad's bad temper as she had often complained about it to me, and somehow did not want her own daughter to be exposed to it. And Grandma would have insisted I go to church. She would never have been able to tolerate me ever staying at home, as young as I was, if I had lived under her jurisdiction. Although their son Kent, who was now in his first year of medical school, had fallen away from the church.<br />
Kent had gone on a mission like his other brothers, but I always got the idea his heart really was not in the church. Now he told his mother he was too busy to attend anymore and besides, his wife, a nurse, was from back east and did not belong to the faith. He had met her in the service. <br />
Grandpa and Grandma loved Kent's wife who was helping put Kent through medical school by working full time. Their contribution was a free apartment. He was also using his G.I. bill from his stint in the navy. He was a poor boy who was being helped by a lot of people to realize the impossible dream of becoming a doctor. <br />
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I was very curious about Kent who I had not been around very much while growing up. He was so popular in medical school he had been elected the president of his class. I thought he was very good looking although he was starting to go a little bit bald like Grandpa. He had written letters to Mother when he was on his mission and in the service that were very amusing, making fun of all he saw. I thought he had the most sophisticated sense of humor of all of Mother's brothers. <br />
I visited Uncle Kent and his wife, Emmy, a time or two and they were very nice to me, but once when I went down to Grandpa's, I knocked on their door and Kent was home alone. We had not talked long before I started feeling not only affection but a very strong attraction to him as he did for me, but I felt uneasy, as I knew this was not what I should want from a relative. He was probably more than a dozen years older than I was. <br />
So I went home determined to keep a very tight rein on myself so that nothing could ever happen between us that should not. I knew I was very lonely, but I was only fifteen, and anything going on between us would be incest as well as a violation of his marriage.<br />
The next time I saw Kent I was prepared to be distant even though he greeted me with anticipation. When he perceived the change in me, he immediately backtracked and was never that nice to me again.<br />
Mother's family was extremely sensitive to slights, so now he was reading rejection in my demeanor. I just could not be too friendly. I simply could not stand another molesting incident in my life. I had to be distant, not because I did not need love, but because I had to be able to trust. <br />
I had always thought that Kent was somewhat disturbed, and that he might have been Mother's only brother to have experienced marked attention from both sexes. I wondered if he had succumbed. If that was the meaning of his rather indifferent attitude toward his faithful wife and willingness to explore other possibilities so readily. Some of Mother's family crossed forbidden lines easily. It was sometimes hard to tell why. <br />
I did not know if Grandpa Wilson had been the bad influence there. I knew that Grandma had always fretted about his possible womanizing after she found evidence that he was having an affair when Mother was about 12. She opened a letter addressed to him. Mother also searched the house until she found the letter and read it, too.<br />
Proof of the affair had a very profound influence on her, I know. When she was tempted I figured she might have thought straying was in her blood and she could not resist going down the same road.<br />
Kent had always been an extremely attractive young man and such young men are often exposed to temptations from every direction. I wished I had been able to talk to him very frankly. We could have had a deep relationship if that had been what he valued. <br />
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Didn't he realize I was too young for any manifestation of desire from him? In the first incident neither one of us had crossed the line, but when he greeted me the second time with the implication that we should go ahead and explore the possibilities of our attraction, I was somewhat disillusioned.<br />
Mother and her people could not take any implied criticism when they did not check their emotions. And now I was never going to be special to Kent again. A handsome charismatic Wilson male who was intelligent enough to aspire to be a doctor did not like to be rebuked however subtly I tried to do it. <br />
Oh well, such was life. Mother's most restrained brother Crae had been killed in the war. Her brother Guy was very busy with two jobs trying to earn a living for his wife and four children. He had to get married while he was still in high school. Mother would take me to see him, sometimes, too when he was running up and down refereeing basket ball games, another part time job he had.<br />
Guy seemed rather reckless. Using up his life force running day and night, even when he was not working. I don't know when he ever got any rest. He was perpetually sleep deprived and I thought he he paid for it by developing stomach cancer when he was 34 just as Great Grandma did when she was a young harassed widow with eight children to raise alone. Only not surprisingly in his case there were no miracles. His brother Kent, a doctor just barely in practice a year, helped operate on him and thought he only had a couple of months to live and he was right.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-76816358880784397192011-07-10T16:53:00.000-07:002013-11-29T08:52:09.179-08:00Memoir: Chapter 33: A beautiful granddaughter comes to live with Great Grandma<div style="text-align: left;">
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I was very surprised to come home from school one day and find that Great Grandma's oldest daughter Eva from the southern part of the state had come to town in what was apparently a family crisis. She had brought her youngest daughter Cheryl, 19, to live upstairs in Grandma's old house which had once been apartments but were no longer rented because the noise the renters made upset Grandma. She said she simply had to get Cheryl out of town and away from the flock of boyfriends who followed her around and distracted her from becoming somebody.<br />
Since she often went to stay a few months with Eva when the hay season was on in Salt Lake, Grandma agreed to let Cheryl stay there if she did not create any disturbances. No, she won't, said Aunt Eva, grim faced. She better not!<br />
I was shocked when I met Cheryl when she came back from registering to the University of Utah. She was one of the most striking girls I had ever seen. I did not even know she existed since I had seen very few of Aunt Eva's and Uncle Dan's children in person. Cheryl had Aunt Eva's dark burning eyes along with long blonde curling hair inherited from her father's side. She was tall and well built with long legs that were simply too shapely for words I thought, given the ones I had inherited from the Wilson side.<br />
She had inherited the Wilson broad shoulders but not those heavy boned legs. I soon found out Cheryl had been princesses and queens of many an event, pageants, parades, etc, which did not surprise me, along with acquiring many boyfriends. As soon as her mother left Cheryl also told me that she was a disgrace to the family because her mother did not think she was any longer chaste.<br />
Well, I was sure she had been besieged with such passion because of those burning dark eyes and blonde hair it was very understandable why she wasn't a virgin. It would have been more surprising if she had been one.<br />
For some reason I started to identify Cheryl's plight with my mother's almost immediately. How could Mother have remained a faithful wife with the husband she had. Although my mother did not have long blonde hair, she had burning dark Wilson eyes and I was sure the passion to match. Mother and Cheryl were first cousins. They had to be similar in so many ways.<br />
Oh dear, but Aunt Eva had married Uncle Dan young and immediately began her large family. She would be hard put to understand the pressure popularity could put on a beautiful Mormon virgin. We were all expected to stay virgins, but some were without a doubt more tempted than others. I had not even been asked out on a date. So it would have been hard for me not to be a virgin, unless molesting counted.<br />
I asked all about Cheryl's brothers and sisters. I was eager to hear all their stories in detail as I was sure now all eight or nine of them must be incredibly attractive and accomplished people. <br />
I questioned Cheryl day and night for a while I was so fascinated with her. Cheryl said her dad was an easy going guy, but not her mother. Oh dear, Aunt Eva must have the volcanic Wilson temper. I had said something to her about church doctrine and already found out that Aunt Eva would not tolerate the slightest disrespect of Joseph Smith's most far out revelations. She would probably even have defended polygamy. <br />
When Cheryl found out I wanted to be a writer she asked me if I would help her write her English themes, as she simply had to pass English in order to make it into the nursing program. I said of course as I thought that would be a challenge for me, too. In fact, I was soon writing all Cheryl's themes for her, as she was always too busy to sit down with me so we could write them together. I could see how she collected hand maidens in this manner as her just due. I didn't think what I ended up doing was exactly right, but I simply could not let Cheryl down.<br />
I never really expected her to treat me like an equal. I was way too nerdy with my glasses, my big nose, and my fat ankles. I had long blonde hair, too, but it did not fall around my shoulders in waves like hers did. <br />
Cheryl and Aunt Anne became the best of friends, and Aunt Anne introduced her to one of her favorite young men who worked in the restaurant business along with her. Before a week had passed Cheryl said she was engaged to him, even though he was some ten years older! <br />
I was shocked. I could see now why she had alarmed her mother. I was thinking it was a shame she was tying herself already to a man outside of her college life. A man in the restaurant business, no less. He would probably be jealous of all the college boys she was meeting. Fortunately they broke up. I think the romance only lasted a month.<br />
Cheryl soon became one of the most popular young prospective nursing students in the whole program. She was passing her classes fine once she applied herself. She just wasn't used to studying, it was plain to see. She probably figured she didn't have to. It looked as though she was going to become a very successful nurse. An interest in medicine was in her blood. My Grandpa Wilson always wanted to be a doctor and now his son Kent was going to live out his dreams and become one. Cheryl was going to make her mother and dad very happy, too, if she actually graduated as a nurse, after they had wondered what in the world was going to become of their daughter. They had even thought she might be too damaged goods. No, no! They still had a treasure in Cheryl. <br />
Great Grandma and I finally got used to all the excitement that whirled around Cheryl whenever she put in an appearance and went back to our more drab lives. I made sure Cheryl passed English. As soon as she moved to the nurses dorm I hardly ever saw her again. But I knew she was incredibly busy. She drew complications as a gorgeous flower draws bees. She could not help the commotion of men flocking around her. She had been destined to be a great beauty. I felt I was privileged to have known for her just a little while and had done my part to help her achieve her mother's dreams of success. I was just happy to have served her.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-12186834590078583812011-07-09T11:58:00.000-07:002013-11-29T06:59:40.627-08:00Memoir: Chapter 32: Starring in the school play my first year at West High School<div style="text-align: left;">
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I knew my instincts were right when the speech and drama teacher at West High, Miss Nelson, took a great liking to me and told me within a couple of months she had decided to cast me in the starring role in whatever play she did. She was considering doing "I Remember Mama" which would have featured some good writing but the lead character was Mama, so I didn't know if I liked that. She let the drama students choose and naturally they picked a frothy high school romance in which I definitely felt less comfortable playing a typical popular high school girl. But the great compensation was that Jack, the head cheer leader, another of Miss Nelson's favorites, played opposite me as well as the young man featured in the photo that appeared in the paper.<br />
I had naturally already fallen in love with Jack, who was ten times more sophisticated than any of his young male peers, but this time I knew better than to let my heart get as involved.<br />
Jack was a senior who had had time to get used to the idea of being a lost boy for he had such charisma and appeal he was bound to have been pursued even as a child by both sexes, and something in him had obviously responded to his own.<br />
He had a girlfriend with far less appeal than he had, but this was standard for a guy like him. If he needed a cover she provided it. When I was in college I ran into Jack in a gay bar. He looked at me with indifference as though to say, 'so now you know.'<br />
I thought I already knew, Jack, so I was cautious. But he was it. I knew I would not fall in love with anyone at West High any deeper. He was a star. He knew it, and he extracted love as his just due. Besides young guys like him always had such an air of suffering I could not resist them. That all started with my dad. Somebody was always going to have to watch over Jack so he would not commit suicide, too.<br />
Miss Nelson, of course, loved Jack and always watched over him.<br />
Great Grandma was gratified enough when her great granddaughter's photo appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune that she did not make a fuss when I had to stay after school to rehearse. Miss Nelson always saw that I got home safely. I was a star so early at West High school, I did not know what I could do that would top it, but Miss Nelson kept me busy both years entering speech and drama meets as far away as Ogden, 40 miles north.<br />
I knew my guardian angels had led me to her. She was a heavy set woman who found great fulfillment in taking her drama students under her wing. To her I was a real find. The drama teacher at Bear River High in Garland would never have discovered my talent he was so hung up on the popular girls.<br />
I wished I could have told Aunt Neta that, but she was still hardly speaking to me. Considering that she was a sewing teacher I thought she had done her best. She did not know how I loved my Grandma King who had saved my life as a child by welcoming me into her home as a loved granddaughter. Grandma King was not literary, far from it. She and her daughter Neta had very similar interests. But she was my Grandma. And she loved her son Clyde. Maybe that was the difference.<br />
I still thought to encourage Margie to live with Aunt Neta and make up for my abandonment which she took as some sort of put down. <br />
I had to go to Salt Lake to fulfill my destiny. Miss Nelson was probably the best drama teacher I could have gotten in the city during that crucial time in my life. She would make high school memorable for me. She alone of all the teachers there singled me out and made me feel I had great possibilities of succeeding in the world of drama. Neil was the only one who had recognized me on a deeper level in Garland, and he was too conflicted for me to be able to depend on him anymore than I could depend on Jack.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4550150787673027320.post-24432158201373810712011-07-06T15:12:00.000-07:002013-11-28T19:03:31.274-08:00Memoir: Chapter 31: New home on Gordon Place on a hill overlooking Salt Lake City<div style="text-align: left;">
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Great Grandma lived in a cavernous old house on a narrow street called Gordon Place that ran between State and Main Street on a high hill. The Utah State Capitol building was a few streets up State street to the east, and the Mormon Temple a few blocks south on Main street to the west of Gordon Place.<br />
I couldn't have asked for a more centrally located place to stay for the year. Grandma and Grandma Wilson lived on fifth south and third east in another big house which Grandpa had turned into small apartments along with another house. He was trying to eke out a living for him and Grandma and little Uncle Bill with rentals and giving chiropractic treatments in his own office with Grandma acting as his nurse. So I would be able to walk down and see them on a Sunday.<br />
Great Grandma's house had been turned into two dwellings, one for her and one for her youngest son Hyrum next door, who I was sorry to hear was dying of cirrhosis of the liver. I had not heard much at all about this Wilson alcoholic, but sure enough he was the oldest black sheep in the family. I had long thought his wife, Alda, was a beautiful woman with long red hair and always flashing a glorious smile. I thought Uncle Hyrum had sure lucked out finding her, as he was so sick he was no longer bringing in money, although he dressed up in a suit and went out to hustle every day. Alda made the living with her career as one of the city's most popular hair dressers, according to Mother. Mother also said Hyrum had very cruelly made her have an abortion each time she got pregnant! But she was being severely punished now with Uncle Hyrum dying which would leave her entirely alone. <br />
I was shocked at such ruthlessness, but Mother said her Uncle Hyrum had been a spoiled man who needed all her money and her attention. I really did not get to find out much more than that as Uncle Hyrum was too ill to entertain guests. He paid Grandma a visit every day, but for only about five minutes. <br />
As for Great Grandma I was immediately taken into her daughter Aunt Anne's confidence who lived directly across the street from her in another historic old house. She wasn't very long in telling me that Great Grandma had ruined her life many years ago by causing her to give up the only boy she ever loved, forcing her marry the wrong man. But the man she had been living with so unhappily for so many years had given her four of the handsomest sons I had hardly ever seen in one family as well as two devoted daughters. <br />
She told me she would come over and give Grandma her bath every week which no young great granddaughter could be expected to do. She made Grandma sound almost like a wild animal you had to manhandle into the tub if you were to get a bath accomplished. I thought maybe she was exaggerating until I heard them in the bathroom the first time. Great Grandma screamed and hollered the whole time, sounding like she was being killed, so I was very relieved Aunt Anne had deemed that job too tough for me.<br />
She warned me Grandma might become dissatisfied with me at any given time, but she would try to see that I would have a place to stay a year. She said it looked as though her sons and daughters would all have to take turns keeping her as she was too much for any one person to deal with the year around. But they just hadn't wanted to start taking her yet, even though she was getting a little too demented for independent living. <br />
I could see mother and daughter were still arguing with one another after many years. I did think to ask how Grandma had forced her to give up her one true love, and she said that Great Grandma threw herself down on the floor in a dreadful tantrum and kicked her legs in the air until she agreed to do it!<br />
Wow! That sounded like one giant fit, but somehow I was reassured by such information rather than put off. My goodness, she sounded like she was related to my mom. I was in fact quite relieved to find out that Mother had no doubt inherited a good part of her temperament from this very notable relative. She was not a one of a kind monster as I had feared at one time. Great Grandma was now beginning to make me think behavior like hers was just ordinary in that family. In fact my mother resembled this grandma more than she did her own mother who I don't recall ever raising her voice in anger, she was always so patient and kind. I was already really glad I had come so I could stop pitying myself because Mother had such a volcanic temper.<br />
I thought I should go very slow with Great Grandma at first, trying not to bring out the worst in her. Of course, I had developed ways of handling Mother which I found worked with Great Grandma too.<br />
I could see that I had gotten entirely the wrong impression of her from hearing all my life how she had received a miracle cure for stomach cancer. The story was she had developed agonizing pains in her stomach and when she was opened up she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was simply closed back up and sent home to die. But Great Grandma was made of stronger stuff than the doctors knew. She told everyone she refused to die because she was a widow with a large family to raise, so she swallowed olive oil constantly she had blessed in the temple. And she simply never died.<br />
I naturally thought she must have prayed day and night, too, to receive such a miracle, but that was apparently not the case either. I had pictured her a very devout Mormon giving thanks to the Lord for her life having been spared to this very day, so was taken back to find out she did not attend church at all. In fact, if she was expected to do anything she did not want to do she would exclaim in a deep wailing voice that she knew she was not going to last long and they would probably never see her again even though she was eighty I am sure.<br />
I thought she looked ancient but was still a very striking old lady with piercing dark eyes and very high cheek bones. Her hair had turn white but I thought many of her relatives had inherited their good looks from her. She looked almost Indian to me but she only owned up to some French blood. She said she was mostly English. <br />
Great Grandpa had been the blond parent responsible for some of the blue eyes in the family. Grandpa Wilson told me he was a very mean man who died when he was eighteen, the oldest son in the family, but his dad had given him so many beatings before dying he had not forgiven hm to this day. He had gotten wounded by a rock flying into his abdominal area while doing road construction work and never recovered.<br />
If he had been as mean as Grandpa described him perhaps it was fortunate for the family he did die young, even though Great Grandma was driven to take in boarders which was maybe why she agreed to take me in, out of force of habit. And the kids all soon had to pitch in and help her feed the family as soon as they got old enough to work.<br />
I wondered if Great Grandma thought that the boy she wanted her daughter Anne to marry would be a better provider than the other one. I did think it was going to be nice to live next door to such handsome cousins as Aunt Anne's sons, one of whom was only a year older than I was, but had lied about his age and had gone into the service just before I came she said. She said he was her wildest son, and she could only hope the service would take some of the rebelliousness out of him. Her youngest son was several years younger than I was, who she said was the best athlete in his class, so she could see what he might be doing through his school years. He was a smart boy and was determined not to get into trouble like his older brother. She said his dad and older brothers would help keep him interested in sports if he would just keep his grades up and refrain from fighting with his teachers.<br />
Mother must have taken me to West High school to register before she went back home. I was disappointed to think I was not going to be able to go to East High school which my dad had attended when he lived with his oldest sister Nethella, but it was located too far to the east of the city for me to reach by bus every day. As it was I had a pretty long walk to West High school. <br />
Oh well, I would only be going to West High for two years before I would have to find lodgings to the University of Utah. The east side was where the more well to do people lived. The west side high school was down by the railroad tracks and poorer kids either walked or rode the bus from their neighborhoods where they had attended junior high school. I had actually wanted to hang out with the rich rather than the poor, but beggars cannot be choosers. Perhaps in my impecunious state, the poor were more my kind. <br />
I did not even inquire about seminary as I had left Garland so I would not have to attend my third year in a Mormon seminary studying Church history. I thought I would do that on my own. I would after all have a lot of religion thrown at me in Salt Lake, the site of a very impressive array of Mormon church buildings in Temple Square, so I didn't want to risk an overdose. <br />
Well, there was nothing like going to live in the city that was the heart of the church to find out how powerful the religion really was.<br />
I would not be expected to attend church since Grandma didn't go, but one of Grandma's most religious sons, Junius, was even a temple official, who came to eat lunch with Grandma several days a week. He also worked for the Safeway chain and brought her sacks of groceries. She prepared his lunch, and it was easy to see she adored this son. He looked to me as though he did not have a bad bone in his body.<br />
He reminded me a great deal of one of her other sons, Joel, who had been the Mormon bishop for quite a few years in Boulder before he decided to move to a town outside of Salt Lake so his daughters could live at home while attending high school. He got a job at the oil refinery and soon the whole family was busy acclimating themselves to city life.<br />
His oldest daughter, Winolia, a year older than I, was now a junior. She was a very kind girl, a great deal like her father, which was quite a feat since her mother was a born critic. I never knew of her to visit Great Grandma at all, but that did not surprise me. The only people this aunt was fond of were her own relatives, and of course her daughters, even though she did not much care for the Wilsons, their father's people. She did not have to tell me that she and Great Grandma had clashed. That was a foregone conclusion. <br />
Aunt Neta took me to stay with Uncle Joel's family a few times when we went to Salt Lake. Winolia had shared stories about Grandma Wilson with me who she said always bought strawberry ice cream when she came to visit her because she knew it was her favorite.<br />
Winolia was so busy as a junior in her high school though, she only came into visit Grandma about once the year I was there. Grandma knew she was coming and made sure somebody brought strawberry ice cream. Winolia and I both had some and went to the movies. We could also walk down town and find a movie theater close by. I thought that was wonderful. <br />
On the whole, I thought Gordon Place was a very satisfactory dwelling from which to launch off my attempts to conquer the city of Salt Lake, as much as possible anyway. I thought it was going to be a very illuminating year.Gerryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00771917880182186281noreply@blogger.com0