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.

Memoir: Chapter 30: Four younger sisters were growing up without me around

I tried to interact with my sisters as often as I could when I came home for the summer.  I felt I risked losing the sister relationships I had with them by living so far away I could not even visit.  The second year Mother and Dad started letting me come home for the Christmas holidays, too.  The richer they felt the more apt they were to agree to the expense.  None of my sisters that I remember except Linda, the youngest one, wrote to me when I was in high school.  I still remember the letter she wrote. I practically memorized it.
"Dear Gerry
    Henry Harws had a stourke down in Horse Canyon.  They thought that he would live but he died the other night.  Your sister Linda"

I still entertained Linda and Ann when I came home with stories I made up, but LaRae did not join us, so I really didn't know how I was going to keep track of  her. She was very independent.  It was hard to tell during the jam packed summer months just what problems they were all having surviving Mother and Dad.  I would have two more years of high school in Salt Lake and four years in college to go through before I could hope to spend any more time with them.
If only they could get through the rough conditions at home somehow, maybe we could connect a lot more down the road aways.  I had no idea at the time what would happen to me to necessitate some months of recovery at home.
I seemed to have pretty much returned to normal after two years in Garland.  The chores I did for Aunt Neta seemed like child's play. Aunt Nethella was helping to bring electricity to Boulder. They were talking about hooking the town up inside of a year! Modern conveniences would surely make my child laborer sisters' lives a lot easier.  They were still the hardest working kids I knew.
Electricity would surely make a big difference in the bottling. No more wood to chop the men had to drag in from the hills.  No fires to keep burning all day long under the pressure cooker.  Most of the meat could be frozen.  Aunt Neta knew how to freeze vegetables and fruit, too.  She thought as I did that primitive conditions in Boulder had probably shortened the lives of some of the hard working women like her mother, my Grandma King.
My mother probably wouldn't die of overwork because of having five daughters and no qualms about using child laborers, but my Grandma King had been one of the hardest working women I have ever seen. She had gone to her reward, but we were really going to miss her.
Never mind, her daughter, Aunt Nethella, was a fiend for work, too. She had plans to put in a big garden spot next to the new house and one of the biggest lawns in town.  She said she was even going to order five peach trees for the orchard, which already had a number of them. How many peaches was she planning to bottle anyway for just her and Grandpa?  Well, she was going to sell them to the townspeople she said. Anything to keep their cellars full and not eating out of the store.  Daddy's sisters were just as horrified as he was over lazy people eating store boughten bread.
Grandma King had been giving us an over supply of fruit to bottle for years, and Aunt Nethella thought the King ranch needed a larger orchard?  But she probably needed more to do since the King women thought visiting was a waste of time.  Whenever I visited Grandma King her hands were always busy with handicraft. There was always a quilt in the works in one of the back rooms.  Somewhere a task was waiting as idle hands were simply not acceptable. Talking while quilting was okay. Grandma's furniture was covered with doilies.  You could always make another doily.
In such surroundings I thought I had done really well to reach Aunt Neta's abode without ever sewing hardly a stitch.  Of course having to do boy's work was the best excuse in the world!

Whenever I went home I was always somewhat overwhelmed with the amount of work that people were trying to get done around me. Margie and I had started to go to the dances, so we insisted on trying to find a dance we could attend every week.  Summer was not going to be all work and no play.
I had gotten over my crush on RayL who just never cared for me enough to make it worth my while. Besides he had gotten to be a bad drinker at a very young age.  That was heart breaking to see.  The better cowboy he became the more he seemed to think he should drink.
There seemed to be just too many wild young local guys in both Boulder and Escalante where my dad had been raised tampering with alcohol.  The prospects of finding a husband who wasn't already an alcoholic did not seem good in that rough country.  I hoped it would not come down to that.  What was the use of going so far away to school if I could not find more promising husband material?
I thought both Mother and Dad were imagining I would find a prospective doctor or a lawyer to marry at the very least.   I thought I needed to find someone who appreciated good books as I did. Whose IQ was somewhere in the same range. After all, hadn't both Daddy and Uncle Max gone to the University with the intention of becoming lawyers? We Kings were smart people.
Demon whiskey interfered with their plans, but since I was showing a good deal less inclination to be wild, what could possibly interfere with my going right straight to the top?  On my Mother's side, her brother Kent was home from the service and was going to the University of Utah.  He aspired to be nothing less than a doctor. Her brother Vance was home from his tour in the military studying engineering at Utah state.  Aunt Neta had taken me to see him in Logan twenty miles away from Garland. Since Mother's brothers were not addicted to alcohol there was a very good chance they would both stay the course and become big successes in life.
I came from people with intelligence even if they did not act like it most of the time.  Mother appeared to be still having affairs while hanging out in her store.  I had of course never breathed a word to my sisters yet about what I thought our dad was doing.
I had shoved his problems to the back of my mind as now that I was becoming a teenager I was worried about finding a boyfriend who did not have the same problem he did.  Daddy was Mother's problem, but a similar boyfriend would be mine!
I had fallen in love with Neil who spelled trouble, a cheer leader no less.  The football players at Garland even dared to refer to him at times as a faggot.  What red blooded American boy wanted to be a head cheerleader all during high school?
I loved Neal every bit as much as I had loved RayL, but I was never going to marry one of the lost boys and live the kind of life my mother had.
I didn't see how my sisters and I could be expected to grow up normal with such parents.  Look what had happened to me by the time I was twelve.  I had half way not expected to make it to my thirteenth birthday.  Mother and Dad acted as though I had returned to normal, but had I really?  I doubted it, and I doubted that my sisters were not being badly affected, too.  Mother and Dad were still fighting, not like cats and dogs I would say, but more like lions and tigers. If they managed not to kill one another, it might be possible the kids would make it to adulthood.  I still could not see anything but a rocky road for all of us.
Well, there was really nothing I could do except try to maintain my health while I was away to school.  Now that I had finally solved my molesting problem at the hands of the Kings' main hired man, I was feeling a lot less strained and more carefree, but I was still troubled about not telling anyone what had been going on.
Didn't seem like much now that I had managed to stop the contacts.  But what if he targeted some other boy or girl who came to stay on that ranch?  Aunt Net's grandson was back visiting with her in Escalante, but in the summers she and Uncle George came to help Aunt Nethella with the work, and she would be bringing him with her.
I still did not see how I could possibly have a talk with Aunt Nethella now that she had come to rely on the hired man so heavily since Grandpa was too old to do any real work anymore.  Her theory seemed to be that he had not been treated well enough, so she was talking about giving him a lot on the property so he could build a house for his family. He could grow old and retire there.  No, no, I thought, but I was always in a quandary about how a man who had acted as he did deserved to be punished.
If I could have talked to her about my dad's problems that might have paved the way to a talk with her about hired men on that ranch who had probably been employed a long time because they did not mind working for such men.  I thought my dad and the hired men usually became of the same mind.  It went with the job, you might say.
I was pretty inclined to think that Grandpa had the problem, too, which was a lot more common than people thought, I was sure.  I figured this was the real  reason he would not go to church even though he did not drink or smoke. He was probably uneasy about how far he should risk going outside his own property to spend any time.
In fact, after the war, Grandpa had employed a very handsome young ex- soldier he seemed so taken with that even Mother and Dad said he had fallen in love.  Grandpa wanted to sell part of the ranch to him at a very good price, but the young man saw that the son was going to object, so he decided to take off.
I just did not see how I could be the one to introduce the subject to Aunt Nethella who did not seem to have any idea that any of her relatives could be of this persuasion.  For a woman with a degree in literature, she seemed to be strangely ignorant to me or just plain unobservant. But she was still so authoritative that I doubted she would listen to me at all.  In fact, I thought I might be in a world of trouble if I ever tried to educate my Aunt Nethella on this subject.  She was known to have a very sharp tongue.  I figured I had just better keep my mouth shut or risk making things a whole lot worse.
I had to settle with warning my sisters to stay away from the hired men.  I still had not told them about Bill Isabel in Salt Gulch either, but I could not get that close to the subject of my dad's problem as I felt they were way too young to be burdened with such heavy thoughts. I had certainly been too young at age five to be burdened with them too, but molesters are ruthless when in the grip of  violent emotions. They obviously don't care what happens to their victims, so my mind had gotten heavily burdened in spite of myself.
Margie was still doing very little out door work, so, although I thought working with Mother all the time might give her questionable ideas, at least she would be safer from dangerous predators.  Mother's example was not the best for daughters, but she and I were getting along better.  I depended on her to drive me to the city to attend high school and to get money for my needs out of Daddy during the school year, who tended to be very stingy with his daughters, and now she had even found another place for me to live as I had requested.  She was all for me going to Salt Lake to high school now I was willing to take a chance living with her relatives while leaving my dad's more perfect one behind.
I thought I might be able to get home easier living in Salt Lake, and I would see Mother and Dad and some of the kids, too, who came to Salt Lake once in a while.  They had never had time to go further north to Garland.  In fact, I thought I would see many more people I cared about in Salt Lake.  This move seemed to be a better plan for my remaining high school years all the way around.
The Boulder people were talking about possibly busing their kids to high school in Escalante down the road a ways so my younger sisters might not even have to go away to school.  I didn't know but what that would be unfortunate for them.  I was being exposed to far more of the world than they would be in little Escalante, home to only about 500 people compared to 100 in Boulder.  I planned to take college prep classes my last two years in high school so  I would be ready for the University.  I was glad not to be going to Escalante.  Besides that is where Daddy went to get drunk.  I doubted that would have helped my stress due to his alcoholism at all.
No, I had needed to go away to school.  Margie would benefit, too, I thought from her years away from both Mother and Dad. But dang, it was hard to leave little sisters every fall.  They were such beautiful kids, smart, lively, active, always turning somersaults, climbing ledges, and hiking to some swimming hole.  I just hoped nothing bad would happen to them.  I just hoped we would all survive our rough childhood years and become good friends somehow.

Memoir: Chapter 29: Friends I should have made for life but didn't

The second winter in Garland Grandma King died.  Mother and Dad decided it was too far away for them to afford to bring me home for her funeral.  Aunt Neta had already been there a week because Aunt Nethella called her to come and spend a few days with her.  I stayed with Miss Woodside.

So when I arrived home in the summer I was acutely aware that my beloved Grandma was gone. I felt guilty because I had not gone to see her the previous summer hardly at all.  She had been busy, too.  Her sister Lil and husband, Uncle George had asked if they might come and live close to her in Escalante.  A very sick daughter-in-law had joined them with her two boys.  One of the boys had the same wasting disease that she did, so they weren't there long before she took him to seek more medical treatment.  They both died, and Dan, the older boy, came back to live with his Grandparents.
Grandpa and Aunt Nethella were busy building the new ranch house.  I was curious about how that was going and would go down and check on them from time to time.  I wondered how long Grandpa would live with his partner for a life time gone.  They had been married a little over 50 years.
I did bring a friend from Garland home with me who was destined not to stay the full week we planned.  I really didn't see any purpose for Bonnie to come since I was not returning to Garland, but she insisted.  I told her I was afraid that she would not be able to handle staying in my parents' home who were much rougher people than Aunt Neta.
I had stayed a number of times with Bonnie in her parents' beautiful old brick mansion in one of the farming communities northeast of Garland.  They were reputed to be some of the wealthiest people in that whole area.  Bonnie's bedroom was as big and well furnished as most living rooms.  She and her younger brother were the only children they had, so I thought Bonnie may have been too sheltered to enjoy our primitive ranch community.  We still didn't even have electricity!
Bonnie assured me that she had been hunting with her father and was used to roughing it.  So I agreed to let her come.  Another friend of mine from Escalante joined us, and we went camping in Kings Pasture.  I recalled later Bonnie noticing the sheaf of letters I had saved from the previous summer that Neal wrote.  I told her yes, they were from Neal but they did not say much, I had been disappointed in them.
Was that the reason she suddenly demanded to be taken to the train in Junction so she could return to her home as soon as we came home from the pasture?  Surely she could not have been jealous of Neal's and my tepid correspondence?  But you could never tell what girl was madly in love with Neal.  I also wondered if Connie, my Escalante friend, who seemed to feel a little jealous of Bonnie because I said she came from wealth, had said or done something to rile her.  I just had no idea what caused Bonnie to have such a big change of heart about my company.  She never wrote to me and explained anything when she got home, either.
In fact, all the way to the train, Bonnie acted like she could not leave soon enough.  Well, that was certainly a switch.  I thought it was a very lucky thing I had decided to leave Garland, because having Bonnie reject me in school would have made matters worse.  She was regarded as highly intelligent due to having the highest IQ in the school, two points higher than mine at 133, besides possessing the wealthiest parents in the valley.  She could have done me serious damage.
Years later I ran into her again when I was a junior at the University of Utah after she acquired a job working for a company downtown in quite a public place.  She had gotten her degree early she said, but she was still just as unfriendly.
By that time I had been rejected as a friend by another small town popular girl at the University who joined a sorority and got more picky. I was beginning to get an inferiority complex when it came to making and keeping friends. Even my Escalante pal whose friendship I thought I could never lose married well and eventually decided she was done with me, too.
Barbara and Elaine, my Boulder school chums, came from large families and when they married both had  fairly large families of their own.  I really did not expect them to have the time to keep up a school girl friendship.  Keeping up their relationships with their family members was I thought more important.
I was even having a hard time staying friends with my sister Margie, less than a year younger.  She told me the first summer after I had been away that at last she had been able to make friends after I left.  That seemed like a low blow. Did I have something in my makeup that made lasting friendship impossible?
Our father seemed to be doing fairly well.  He and my mother were even talking about purchasing a new ranch property.  The sisters who had stayed home said Daddy was still drinking, but he was not going to the extremes that had caused me such upset I had to leave home early.
Margie would be going away to school for the first time when I planned to be in Salt Lake attending high school. She and Aunt Vesta had decided that she could take dancing lessons even though she would be going out of state to Washington.  I told her that if she ever changed her mind about going so far away to live with Aunt Vesta, she should try to live with Aunt Neta.  I was sure given her interest in sewing, Margie would make an ideal school girl boarder, just as our cousin Roma had.  Margie did not even blink at the prospect of making a suit.  I still felt guilty over Aunt Neta's anger at my leaving, but not enough to change my mind even though I knew I was now her least favorite niece.
I was relieved when Mother said she talked to her Aunt Anne in Salt Lake and she agreed that I could come and stay with Great Grandma Wilson who lived across the street from her.  She said that Grandma was either going to have to start living with her kids or someone would have to be brought in to stay with her.  So I would be on trial for the next winter, being a companion to this old lady. She might not fall in love with me either, but I resolved to do my best to entertain her.  I made up my mind not to take it personal if I failed my trial period.  I just hoped I could hang in there a year.
I really did not know Great Grandma very well, having only seen her a few times in my life.  But if staying with her would get me established in Salt Lake, I was willing to try it.  I told Mother to tell Aunt Anne that come fall, I would be there!  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that living in Salt Lake might be exciting in all kinds of ways!

Memoir: Chapter 28: Demon-possessed cattle cause me to lose Sorly in Big Holler who trotted back home to Dad

When I came back to southern Utah after my first year in Garland, before I turned fourteen,  I had developed a plan to take care of my problem with Grandpa's hired man.  After many hours of agonizing, I decided that I would refuse to do any cow punching down in the draw for Daddy.  Amazingly this plan worked.
After nine months away from home Daddy was used to doing without me to help him, so when he asked me to get on a horse and go down in the draw to bring up some stray cattle he accepted my excuse that I was urgently needed somewhere else that day.  I had planned that he would not be suspicious enough to try to track down my real reason for refusing to help him.  I was still certain that if any crisis brought on by Cecil's interaction with me surfaced, a possible murder might result, whose I wasn't sure, Cecil's or Daddy's.
A few days later, however, Daddy told me that he had something urgent to do and he needed me to drive a herd of cattle to Sand Creek, his Salt Gulch range.  This time he seemed determined I wasn't going to get out of it.  He suggested I call and ask my friend Barbara in Salt Gulch to see if she could not use one of the Coleman horses that day, so she could trail the herd up the mountain while I went on lead and eventually guided them to a gate near a cattle guard, which I was to open so they could be driven through to the right range.  The directions sounded awfully complicated to me, but Daddy insisted that he could not go.
He told me I could ride Sorly and he would help me drive the herd across Home Bench to Big Holler.  But I was still pretty much stunned when the herd turned out to be the largest one I had ever managed by myself, around fifty cows with calves, and what turned out to be a small demon-possessed herd of five dry calves and a bull.  
Right away this wild bunch moved out ahead of the slow cows and calves.  I was alarmed and asked Daddy how I was supposed to keep the two bunches together.  He said I would need to push ahead of the herd from time to time as when there was a wash ahead the wild ones might take off from the road and run up the wash toward the mountain!
I remembered there was a wash down to the bottom of Big Holler.  Surely they would not run away so soon up that wash, but oh yes, they did.

Daddy was long gone.  Mercilessly he had turned back at the top of Big Holler.  There was no way for me to push ahead of the herd as they headed down Big Holler.  The road was too steep and narrow.  I doubted if even Daddy would have pushed ahead on this road so he could hold up the dry cows and the bull.  I thought the slow cows and calves would never reach the bottom of Big Holler.
When we did, I could not see the dry cows and the bull anywhere.  I rushed up the wash a little ways to see if I could spot fresh tracks.  Sure enough, there were tracks, but the demon possessed herd must have run fast because I could not see them.  The further up the wash I raced Sorly the more alarmed I became.  Finally, finally I caught up with the wild bunch apparently headed for the mountain as fast as they could go just any old way they could get there.
I managed to get in head of them so I could turn them back around.  To my horror, instead of running obediently back down the wash, they started climbing up the steep sides of the wash.  Oh drat.
I simply did not dare try to scale that steep hillside on a horse, coward that I was, so I jumped off the horse and tied his reins to a bush, and headed up the side of the hill on foot! I finally got the cows and bull headed back down, so I ran back and jumped on my horse again, and whoops, they turned, once I was no longer behind them, and headed back up the side of the hill again. I jumped off my horse again, and in my haste I must have tied Sorly very insecurely to the bush.
I had barely left him and started running as fast as I could up the side hill again, when I turned and out of the corner of my eye saw Sorly pull loose from the bush.  Oh my God I had forgotten that Sorly tended to bolt when his reins were down.  He wasn't like a long line of King horses you could have walked up to and caught in the open fields. He headed down the wash very fast!  He acted like he meant business.  He was through with my amateur cow punching.  He was going back to the barn. 
The demon-possessed cows and the bull, I am sure, laughing all the way, proceeded on up the hillside and disappeared over the top, headed I was certain, all six of them, for the mountain and a trespass.
I ran past the slow cows heading slowly out to the other side of Big Holler on their way to Salt Gulch, hollering for my horse, who was not paying the slightest bit of attention. I never did catch up with him the whole five miles home.
When he arrived home, if he could have talked he would probably have told the whole horrifying story to Daddy, who by the great grace of God, had not left for his other urgent job whatever it was. You can imagine how happy he was to see me and Sorly show up.
He did not say a word to his prize horse as he caught him and waited for me to mount him again, but he said plenty to me after he had saddled his horse to accompany me back to Big Holler.
"We won't know any more than a pig where all those other cattle have gone!" was one thing I vividly remember him saying.  I think he was as surprised as I was when we rode fast down into Big Holler and all fifty cows and calves were laying down taking a rest by the side of the road, having never left Big Holler at all after I disappeared.  Maybe they were waiting for me to come back and drive them!
Daddy turned and headed his horse straight up the steep east side of Big Holler and said he would try to catch up with the dry calves and the bull before they got too far away.  I was mighty surprised when I had driven the main herd out of Big Holler and down the road aways, to see him come racing back driving four dry cows and the bull.
"One of those dry cows is headed for the mountain as fast as she can go," was all he said. "I couldn't catch her!"  Then he pulled up his horse.
"Where are you going?" I all but screamed.  Surely he could not be thinking of leaving me with this giant herd and that little demon possessed wild bunch again!
"I told you I've got things to do," he said firmly. "Just don't get off your horse!" he added, as if I would. "And make sure you go ahead of the herd when you come to any kind of wash or turn off. Your main herd isn't going anywhere.  It's the dry cows and the bull you have to keep up with."

Yes, they headed up another wash just after we came off the little Rocky Hill, but I was ready for them.  And so was Sorly.  He went after that demon possessed bunch with a vengeance.  All I had to do was stick on him.  He knew what to do, oh did he ever, and he made sure this time, when I gave him the chance, that he got it done. We ran that little wild bunch back into the main herd hard!
But I had a mighty strained mind before we arrived to the Coleman ranch in Salt Gulch, rushing ahead to every possible turn off those cattle might take a notion to go down.  I was so happy when I saw Barbara's horse tied up outside the Coleman fence.  
As soon as Barbara saw me pass with my cattle she rushed out and got on her horse and joined me. She was a great help just herding the slow cows along who were inclined to meander and graze while I ran Sorly ahead, keeping up with the wild bunch.
I was still mighty worried about losing the dry cows and bull once we got to mountain terrain, but Daddy said that was why he had included some of the dry cows in the herd because some of those old dry cows knew where they were going.  They had been there before.
I hardly even had a chance to say hello to Barbara I was so busy.  It still seemed like an eternity before I spotted the fence Daddy said we would come to.  I rode quickly ahead and found the gate by the cattle guard.  I was even able to unlatch it and open it without dismounting, thank goodness.
Somehow or another we had arrived to our destination with all fifty head of the cows and calves and four dry cows, instead of five, and the bull.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief when they crowded through the gate and scattered. There they'd be all summer growing fat and sassy.
Barbara and I had time for a few words as we turned our horses around and started back down the mountain.  I was telling Barbara a little bit about my morning's ordeal when I noticed something strange and wonderful.  Sorly was dancing.  Yes, that darned horse danced with me all the way down the mountain.
Sorly could not have said in any plainer words that he was celebrating our mission accomplished.  His trainer and my dad had not allowed us fail.  He never let either one of us fail when it came to handling cattle, if he could possibly help it.
Sorly had learned I was a greenhorn.  And he had bolted.  Daddy forgave him, but he made him and me go back and finish the job that only he thought we could do.
Mother brought the pickup truck over to pick me up so she could give Sorly a ride home, too.  I thought he had earned it.

Memoir: Chapter 27: Falling in love with the lost boys for the rest of my life

It did not take me long to find an interesting possible boyfriend, a very popular boy from Garland named Neil who insisted he was going to run for cheerleader that year arousing talk about what he was all about. He did not seem to care what the kids said about him. I suspected right away from such an attitude that Neil was one of the lost boys, already beyond the power of the female sex to retrieve from whatever world he inhabited now, even at fourteen going on fifteen. I thought he would marry though in Mormon society and possibly have a family, but tepid love would be all he could feel for the lucky girl which I did not think would be enough for me.
However I feared I was doomed to fall in love with the lost boys forever. Neil found out I wanted to be a writer, so once when we were being bused to Salt Lake to see a Shakespeare production he told me to write plays and he would perform in them.  But only one time did I ever feel a real spark from Neil, which happened under very bizarre circumstances, but it was enough to keep me his willing slave for the rest of the time I lived in Garland.
I got acquainted with a little circle of girls from Garland, all freshmen.  Although I felt inadequate trying to be one of this sophisticated gang who had all grown up together, I did my best.  Aunt Neta and her daughter-in-law, Ada, started telling me right away I had to go to the football games in order to be accepted and popular.  Both appeared to be dismayed by the stacks of books I started bringing home.  I had never had access to well stocked libraries in my life, so I was taking books home from the school library as well as the town library and was reading so much, my eyes hurt to turn them.  This simply would not do as far as my advisers were concerned.  The least I could do was join the pep club so I could wave pom poms.
Given my past, it was impossible for me to dedicate my life to doing something so trifling. I never did go to the football games which I had not seen before, but I finally learned to love basketball games. Even though I never waved a single pom pom in Garland. 

When the girls day dance came around, Pauline, one of the girls from my Garland gang, begged me to ask a boy and take him in her car.  Her mother had promised she could take the family car since she had been driving forever even though she was two years away from being able to secure a legal license.  For some reason the cops looked the other way when she drove by, she insisted. 
 I felt very uncomfortable about asking a boy who had never asked me out to a dance.  She said everybody did it.  The way she got me to go along was by suggesting I could ask Neil.  The fact that I liked him had not escaped her notice.
I protested that Neil had not asked any girls to the previous dances that year.  She said that didn't matter.  He would expect to be asked to the girls' day dance.
Our plans were made but just a few days before the dance when I was going to have to rake up my nerve to ask Neil to go, Pauline said that she was going to ask Neil to go after all, but I should ask DeLyle, Neil's best friend.  She pretended to think there was very little difference between the two boys, but DeLyle was not very attractive even though he was a constant buddy of Neil's.  I did not have the faintest interest in him, and was horrified that I was now expected to take him to the Girls Day Dance.
Pauline said I had to go because she had persuaded her mother to let her drive so she could take at least three of her gang to the dance.  She was  fourteen, nearly two years older than I was, so I found her to be too forceful to resist. I dutifully asked DeLyle, kicking myself for ever getting into the position of feeling obligated.

I was sitting in the backseat with DeLyle who I scarcely knew on the way to the dance.  We were all crowded together. Everyone was talking.  In the dark car nobody appeared to notice when Neil slipped his hand over the back seat and grabbed mine.  I was sitting a little forward so there would be room for the other two in the back seat. He held my hand the rest of the way to dance. I have still never forgotten the feeling of mad delicious passion he inspired in me. Just that one time he seemed to feel it, too. 
I figured  Pauline might have even told him that she had gotten me to go by promising me I could ask him.  Now he was getting even. He did care enough about my obvious misery to respond!  He knew very well DeLyle did not appeal to me at all, and Pauline had taken advantage of my younger age and inexperience to force me into a humiliating situation. He probably felt manipulated by her willfulness, too. After all, if he was going to get elected cheerleader he could not afford to rile a powerhouse like Pauline either.  
 I was not used to dating boys at all and I thought the actual dance would never end. I never even got to dance with Neil. The dance occurred at the end of the school year, and Neil further alleviated my pain by asking me if I wanted to write to him during summer vacation.  I said yes with a leaping heart, but alas, I was to be sorely disappointed in his letters.
He sounded amazingly like Aunt Neta with her complaints about her ex husband's infidelity. Neil's letters were chock full of bitchy complaints about girls.  There was not one speck of passion for me or them in any of his writings, although I never stopped looking and hoping. 

I knew by those letters that school girl charms did not interest him.  Someone somewhere had already responded to his need who was not a girl.  I heard that his father had died leaving his mother a widow.  I thought that might have had something to do what happened to him. I knew Neil was not attracted to the quite ordinary DeLyle.  He really was just a friend. Neil was still fighting whoever it was, all of them.  He did not want to be one of the lost boys with all the misery and humiliation that might cause him.  Who could blame him?
It was as though he knew I did not have the power that could reach him.  His letters reflected his resignation.  I just accepted with as good of grace as I could muster what had happened to him.  That was the least I could do.  He had thought enough of me to write the letters, even though they were painfully revealing.

I went back to Garland for a second year unable to get out of a year of sewing.  I made a simply horrid looking dress I thought would at least be easy to make but it was so ugly I could never bear to wear it.  So much for the beautiful clothes Aunt Neta said I would be able to make if I would just learn to sew. 

I attended Mormon Seminary faithfully for two years, five days a week.  We studied the old testament the first year and the new testament the second.  I was going to have to take church history the third year which was partly the reason I balked.  I had even attended Mutual for the girls and boys my age.  I had gone to all the Sunday church meetings Aunt Neta required of me.  My second year in Garland was so uneventful, so completely lacking in excitement I made up my mind I simply had to get out of there before I had to make that suit.
I started asking my mother if she would please let me live in Salt Lake during my junior year in high school. I told her I needed to get down there and graduate from a big city school so I would be better prepared to attend the University of Utah.

In the meantime, Miss Woodside, the history teacher, had come back to live with Aunt Neta.  We three had quite a companionable time my sophomore year, getting along I thought very well.  But when I told Aunt Neta I thought I would be transferring to a Salt Lake high school the next year, she acted furious.  Why, I didn't know.  She seemed to take it very personally.  She said, "Oh but you won't be able to have Miss Woodside as your history teacher."  I said, airily, "Oh, that's all right, she talks too much anyway!"
I never should have said that because it made Aunt Neta angry beyond belief.  Miss Woodside did talk too much, I thought, because she could not possibly talk about what she was really interested in I did not think. But Aunt Neta all but never spoke to me again after I persisted in moving to Salt Lake.
I did not think she had been that attached to me.  A seamstress I was not going to make, a devout Mormon I did not want to be, so what was the source of her anger at me for leaving a school that was not really doing anything for me? 
Nobody read books in that school.  Neil had been my one hope. He only had expressed interest in the plays I would write, but his letters to me had been so flat, he could not hold me there.  We had no plans to correspond the second summer. I was not even able to get a part in the school play.  The drama teacher was in love with cheerleader type girls and they and other popular girls got all the good parts both years I was there. 
Nor I did not dare say an unconventional word or I would have had Aunt Neta smiting me down.  She appeared obsessed with what girls had to do and say to be popular.
I just did not care that much about being popular.  I was never going to be popular.  I read too many books.  I had always been regarded as disturbingly smart.  I was used to it.  But I still chose to read obsessively.  That's what people who were going to be writers did.