Memoir: Chapter 37: Dumbing down of high school kids aggravates me in a big Salt Lake High School

I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Was she really that afraid to give one of her top students the opportunity to express her own thoughts?
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!
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.
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.
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.

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.
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!!"
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.

Memoir: 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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Memoir: 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

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. 
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. 
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. 
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. 

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. 
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. 
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.
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.
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. 
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. 
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. 
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.
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. 
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. 
If a jeep could sink to the hub caps that close to the house, what about horses I was thinking.
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!"
"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."
"We haven't got time for that!" snapped Daddy. "Come on." He always hated cowgirls related to him acting like craven cowards on horseback.
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.
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.
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!

Memoir: Chapter 34: Visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wilson and little Uncle Bill and playing Chinese checkers

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. 
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.
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.
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.
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.

Ben was only twelve when he was killed.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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. 
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.
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.
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.   
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.   
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.
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.

Memoir: Chapter 33: A beautiful granddaughter comes to live with Great Grandma

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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.

Memoir: Chapter 32: Starring in the school play my first year at West High School

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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
Miss Nelson, of course, loved Jack and always watched over him.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Memoir: Chapter 31: New home on Gordon Place on a hill overlooking Salt Lake City

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.
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.
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. 
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. 
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.
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.
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. 
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.  
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.  
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.
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. 
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.