Category: MY STORY

1955-1956 a snippet of a husband’s childhood

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by Bob Gardner – written to me in an email 03/14/2007

Chugwater Wyoming population in 2010 – 212

I was three or four. We lived in a farmhouse in Chugwater, Wyoming. Linda was seven or eight. The rooms were huge. Linda and I ran the length of the house without fear if hitting anything. I recall sitting in my wagon and Linda would push me as fast as she could and we would scream from room to room; through large doorways and into the living room. Mom and Dad would laugh as the dogs would run and bark at us while we ran. I remember worrying about smashing in to the large glass doors in the house but it never happened.

Nothing bad ever seemed to have happened there. We had no running water; only a well with a pump out front which we used for dishes. I remember more than once men waking through our property and asking for a drink from our well, Mom would let them drink [from the well], but for our drinking water, we would walk for what seemed like miles down to the clear spring near the river which ran out back behind our house. We dipped water out of the clear spring and brought it home in large gallon jars that Mom brought home from the restaurant she worked at. The water then had to be boiled for drinking.

I loved that house. Dad would come home, and Linda, Mom and I would go to the river and swim. (Well, I would wade.) Linda would paddle and Mom and Dad would swim. I felt very protected there. Mom was happy. Dad was normal and Linda and I were the best of friends.

One day the river ran dry and the fish in the river lay there dead and dying. We had to move, and left what seemed to me to be a paradise behind.

the last time

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The day was November 26th 1988 – the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Mom, Dad and Grandma Tabor had the motorhome packed with their travel belongings after a few days of visiting and enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with them and my special “little sister” guest, Leisa. We had managed to fit in a huge holiday feast; the requisite shopping on Friday after, and of course, several rounds of Bingo at Papago Bingo. I had stuffed the traveling refrig with container after container of Thanksgiving leftovers. This was a special one as I had never known my mother to leave her home for that particular holiday. This was the first and only one in my life. One year she was sequestered on a murder trial as a jurist, and the judge had ordered the jury dismissed just for that day and they had to return to sequestration Thanksgiving night. Mom had made a detailed list of everything I needed to buy a week prior to the holiday with detailed instructions on how to prepare what and how and when – like I didn’t already know after being her right hand gal since the age of 10. Even on a several week jury trial, she still insisted that the family dinner would be held on North 18th Street, and no amount of reasoning was going to change her mind. And so it was. So, I was quite surprised when she called and said they were coming for Thanksgiving. Mom had suffered a bad bout of the flu in several weeks prior and I thought maybe she was just worn out. So, I didn’t question it. I was excited to host Thanksgiving at my house in Tucson. Of course she insisted that everything would be just as though we were in Grand Junction. She would do all of the cooking and baking. Gram was in charge of peeling 10 pounds of potatoes and I was charged with setting and decorating the table. I didn’t give a second thought to Mom’s comments here and there. “I do not ever want to die in Tucson.” When I said what an odd thing to say, she explained that we had that doctor here who transplanted hearts. And what if he took hers out and replaced it with someone who was mean? Would those unprincipled traits be transferred to her? I kind of just shrugged it off with a smile. We were sitting in the living room relaxing one afternoon, watching an old rerun of Designing Women where the ladies had designed a New Orleans style send off for a young friend who had died of Aids. Mom stated that she wanted her funeral to be like that with upbeat music and lots of flowers. Maybe I should have paid more attention.

After a nice breakfast at Coco’s, the three musketeers were on their way home. I didn’t envy them. The drive from Tucson to Grand unction is almost unbearable for me; hours of dry dusty desert with no cell or radio reception. It is, nicely put, miserable. They didn’t seem to mind. As long as Mom was in her motorhome, she was good. Cristopher was out with friends. Ricky was at a U of A game enjoying his time with friends in the kids Knothole Section. Bob and I were set to enjoy a movie night out with 4 year old Jeffry in tow. As the movie time slowly approached, Bob reminded me that we needed to get on our way. But, I felt uneasy and did not want to leave the house that night. When I relayed that to my husband, he just nodded okay and went about his evening. He was used to me changing my mind so nothing unusual about that.

If memory serves, it was around 7 in the early evening when the phone begin to ring. It was still in the time where the phone hung on the wall. Bob held the phone out saying it was my dad and if they had car problems, I was to find out where they were and he would be on his way. Before I put the phone to my ear, I quietly said to Bob “honey, my Mom is dead,” He just looked at me, admonishing me with his stare about the inappropriateness of making such a comment. As I lifted the phone to my hear, I could hear my Dad’s voice saying “Mom’s gone”.

I felt the tears as Daddy explained the chain of events leading up to this call. And then the blur of the night began. Laundry had to be done for five people making the 780 mile trek to western Colorado; arrangements had to be made for Jeffry to stay with my Tucson friend, Peggy for a week. Calls had to be made to my siblings. And in a flurry of tears and questions and travel arrangements, we finally fell into bed after midnight. And then came the long and drawn out sobs as Bob held me tightly until finally exhaustion and sleep took over. And this day was over.

My Mom was gone.

1970 – GJHS

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High school was a never ending source of fear for me.  My favorite classes caused panic attacks so harsh that I thought my heart would explode.  I broke out in hives every time a teacher asked me a question – even though it was rare that I didn’t have the answer.  I had great friends (some even from elementary school) that I silently questioned if they really liked me.  I didn’t smoke.  I did no drugs.  I didn’t drink, save for some beer sneaking with Janis or Debi or Kathy.  I wondered how I fit in with other students.  When the school day ended, most days I was off to the hospital to work as a nurse’s aide.  There I was confident and never questioned my decisions.  I took pride in my work with patients.  I wanted their rooms to be the neatest and their water carafes always filled with fresh ice water and their nightly back rubs amazingly soothing.  Because of that, charge nurses wanted their nightly staff to include me.  The Sisters of St. Mary’s loved me.  The doctors respected me.  The kids from high school that also worked as nurse’s aides and orderlies counted on me.  Even though these were some of the kids I could not muster the courage to “befriend” in the school hallway, working at the hospital was a completely different scenario.  We took breaks together, sometimes sneaking through the boiler room up to the roof four stories above the city.  The fresh crisp air regenerating us as we ate our brown bag dinners and,  after thirty minutes seeming like a hundred, we were always ready to get back to work and care for our patients. St. Mary’s Hospital was our own little world; separate and far apart from the world of clics and classes and who had the best hair and the nicest clothes.  Nurse’s aides wore their hair up or very short and topped with the powder blue cap to distinguish aides from nurses.  White uniform dresses (no cutesy scrubs back then), no pant uniforms; name tag over the left breast; white hosiery and white nurse shoes rounded out the approved attire.  Same for orderlies with white scrub top, white pants (not jeans) white socks and white shoes.  Probably had tidy whiteys too, but I had no personal knowledge of that.  Now I completely understand the modern day school uniform policies.  Employees should work as a team.  Students should learn as a team.  Even families should stay together as a team.  Right, well more on that later.

During those three years, (in the 60’s, high schools consisted of Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors.  Freshmen were the head honchos at junior high schools.) Bob and I drifted in and out of each other’s lives.  When he would appear during my study hall hour and walked right in to talk to me, I was floored.  I was also thrilled, but I never understood the audacity to just do that.  Hell, I was terrified to ask to go to the bathroom!  I admired his guts and I marveled how just hearing his voice, put me smack in the middle of a black and white movie with the disheveled hair and cowboy boots bad guy wooing the properly attired and properly uncertain girl.  I loved every moment of it.  My boyfriend at the time would look confused as Bob led me out of the class so we could talk outdoors.  All the while, the boyfriend would obligingly correct my geometry assignment until I returned.  What a guy!

Towards the end of my Senior year, I was hospitalized for two weeks.  Two very critical weeks for seniors with finals and graduation rehearsals.  I had decided that at 117 pounds, I was fat.  And I did not want to be fat at Graduation – like anyone would notice under those huge billowy gowns anyway.  I wanted to be 100 pounds exactly and stay that weight for the rest of my life. I was wearing a size 7 and wanted to wear a 5 or even a 3.  I decided to put myself on a liquid diet. 

Working at a hospital, that was easy to do with all of the jello and broth that was available.  For the first two weeks, I only sipped broth, jello water, and ice chips.  Around the third week, my stomach could only tolerate the ice chips.  I was just at 105 pounds when I passed out in a patients room while at work.  I could hear the patient calling for a nurse but could not open my eyes or move my limbs.  The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed on 2W.  Wait a minute – that is where they had the mental patients and the lock up ward.  I soon learned that I suffered a major concussion due to the fall, but my dad’s friend and doctor was sure that I passed out due to drug usage.  It was such a ridiculous observation that I did not even bother to respond; assuming that my parents would find it equally ridiculous.  They did not.  I was flabbergasted that my own parents thought I was taking drugs.  Hurt and betrayal do not begin to scratch the surface of how I felt.  My parents thought I was using drugs.  Me.  ME!  I was embarrassed by the truth of why I had passed out that night and decided to finally release that tidbit to mom and dad.  They thought I was making it up to cover for the drug usage.  I was shattered.  This would just be the first time my own doctor would forget his oath of “First, do no Harm”.

The only thing that kept me going was visiting hours and seeing my friends.  Marla would visit with pizza in hand and gossip from school.  Judy would stop by on every break and dinner hour to check on me.  Every evening was friends and laughter.  The Sisters passing by would give us the “nun look” to quiet us down.  I was expecting Bob to show up every day of the two weeks, but he did not.  Years later he would tell me how he would get to the door of my room, and I would have someone else visiting, so he would leave.  Each day I would awake with the same expectation dashed by the end of visiting hours.

On a lighter note, St. Mary’s had recently employed the dreamiest male nurse assigned to 2W, and I had no problem feigning lightheadedness in order to be scooped up in his arms and carried back to my bed.  If there were a television show titled Gdovin’s Anatomy airing on ABC on Thursday nights, there would be no doubt who would be cast as Nurse McDreamy.  He was a caring and dedicated nurse and spent several minutes after each episode stroking my head and taking my vitals to assure I was going to be fine.  While he never seemed to catch on, the old lady in the other bed did.  She once commented how she wished that she was able to get out of bed and feel faint so he could carry her back to bed.  She made the comment and ended with a wink.  I could feel the dark red creeping from my toes to my face.  The jig was up.  Damn the observant old lady!

Upon my release from the hospital, I was under doctor’s orders to remain at home for the following two weeks, where I did my homework, sun bathed (had to keep my tan strong) and prepared for Graduation.  Graduation Day was my swan song to Grand Junction High School.  I had a sweet new dress for my now getting back to normal size 7 body, relatives had come in to celebrate, and Jimmy, a long time neighbor and classmate presented me with a white rose for the occasion.  I felt like royalty and relished every minute.

It was the end of childhood and I was ready for the world.

Wasn’t I?

1967 – Bob

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If memory serves, September 5, 1967 was the first day of high school and the first time we met. You were a tough looking street kid with a smart-assed attitude. I am not sure just why I was drawn to you at the time, but I was. I was modest and not at all street-wise and obviously reared in an entirely different environment than you experienced. You clearly showed an interest in me with your playful glances and funny comments. My older brother, Jay, put it this way: “here you were, Miss Polly Pure Heart and along came this James Dean wanna be with cigarettes rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve and a beer in hand.  Of course you were going to fall for him.”

To say you did not always attend first hour geometry class would be an understatement of immense proportion. To put it in plain speak, you rarely attended most classes. I found myself distracted when you were not in Geometry class. It was the only class we ever had together and even though geometry was a difficult subject for me to grasp (and still is), I felt more confident and at ease when you actually did show up for class. I guess even then, barely knowing each other, you somehow made me feel comfortable and protected. I tried not to let you see that side of me, but I think you had it all figured out.  And, yes, I did know that you stared at my legs most of the class time.

I often wondered why you never finished your sophomore year. I know you did not experience the support of a family at home. Looking back, I think you were lost and possibly felt you had nothing to offer high school and high school had nothing to offer your life. You worked. You drank way too much. You dated the wrong girls (well, of course I would say that) and you wandered. I never even realized in my naiveté, there was even a choice on attending school. It was a given in my life and I never thought of it any other way. You, like geometry, were a foreign concept. I am not sure that I have ever figured you out completely.

At the beginning of the summer of 1968, my younger brothers, Mark and Larry, had quickly grown restless of the empty days and wanted to make some money. I put my creative skills to work and made some advertising on index cards offering their services for yard work and included our phone number and their names. The boys took all afternoon walking the nearby neighborhoods and placing their cards on front doors. They were so excited when they got their first job offer, even though it contained a rather odd request to “bring your sister” with them. Mom told me to go with them the next morning and see what this crazy lunatic wanted. And there you have the difference between my Mom and other Moms. She sent her 16 year old daughter to check out the “lunatic” (her term, not mine) and I went without question. I walked with them three blocks from our home only to realize that you were the lunatic to whom my Mom referred.

They worked on your yard a few days a week and I found myself accompanying them most of the time. You soon won Mark and Larry over with your antics (actually, I would classify it as bullying, however, they thought it was fun) and they became comfortable enough with you that you would awake to water running in your basement early in the morning. They found a pipe that was open and sticking up in the front yard and did what any normal 12 and 11 year old boy would do. They stuck the hose down the pipe to see what would happen! Antics work both ways.

As you became more comfortable around me, you would stop by my house when you knew I would be home. My routine was to awake at 8am, grab something for breakfast, a magazine and my baby oil, don my little white and red ruffled two piece and lie on the patio sipping water, reading and enjoying the heat on my body. This was before the time of sunscreen and skin cancer scares. In fact, the advertisers actually encouraged readers to bronze up and teenage competition was fierce to have the best tan. I was a willing participant and I normally did have the best tan. Since I worked as a hospital nurse’s aide from 3 pm – 11 pm, I had the advantage of the morning and early afternoon sun rays.

Evenings that I did not work, would find you at my house entertaining my younger siblings or watching my Mom and Grandma at the dining room table, working on a jigsaw puzzle. On a few occasions when I was allowed to leave the house with you (Daddy was certain you were some kind of teenage punk and my Mom was convinced you were responsible for the junior high school fire the year before), we would take long walks, and I swear I thought my heart would jump out of my chest when you took my hand. I lived for those evenings and thought of nothing else.

Time passed way too fast and with it I knew the time with you would become limited because I would still work four or five days a week and maintain a full schedule for my junior year. I did not know, however, that you had talked your Mother into signing a waiver so you could join the Army at the age of 17. I was mortified. This was during the war in Vietnam and having my oldest brother in the Army was scary enough; and now you. I was hurt and furious all at the same time. You didn’t even tell me until the day you were actually leaving. Driving up to my street in a borrowed truck, you leaned out of the window and flatly queried, “Are you going to kiss me good-bye? I am leaving for the Army tonight. That was our first kiss and came with anger and tears – not like my other first kisses. This first kiss was with someone that I truly cared about – loved. And this someone, you, did not bother to include me in your plans, to share an uncertain future. So, while you had time to mull this decision over, I literally had a few hours to compose myself, pick up my friend, Mary Svaldi,  for support, and get to the airport to say good-bye.

I thought we would have some time together while we waited for the plane. Instead, I was faced with a table full of people who I did not know and who never bothered to introduce themselves to me. There was no meaningful good-bye. No Casa Blanca moment. No “we’ll always have Paris”. I turned and left when your flight was called and didn’t look back. Not more than five or six times, anyway.

You broke my heart that night.

I expected a dramatic good-bye with tears, embraces and promises of a future life. Everything I ever saw in old movies all rolled up into an airport good-bye. Didn’t happen. Of course, you were forgiven when I got a letter the next day and almost every day after that. There were the phone calls, often very late at night, prompting my Mom to shout loudly into the phone, on more than one occasion “you can tell that idiot not to call after 10”. She may have used a few other words in her not so ladylike comments.

You were born with fluid on the lungs, so being assigned to a base in the humid state of Kentucky; it was inevitable that you would develop a severe case of pneumonia. After several weeks in the base infirmary, you were honorably discharged and on your way home. Or, so I thought. You ended up in Texas with one of your street buddies, working as a fry cook, drinking and fighting. As a youngster, your father taught you to fight rather than talk. He abused you. You learned to fight at a young age and seemed to actually enjoy the physical altercations. After a letter or two from Texas, we just lost touch.  It was too difficult to maintain this long distance relationship again.  I was young enough to still have crushes on other boys and I liked dating.  You can’t really enjoy a date when you live hundreds of miles apart.

Several months later, I passed by your old house and  my head swirled in memories. Why did I always get that funny feeling and rapid heartbeat when I passed your old house?  Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to write you a letter knowing that the post office would forward it if at all possible. After a short walk to the far end of my neighborhood to drop the letter in the bright red corner mailbox, I returned home just in time to receive a phone call from you. We had not seen or talked or written to each other for almost a year. And the day I decided to write you a letter, you called. Even today, you can bring a smile to my face when you sing “my baby – she wrote me a letter”.

The rest, as they say – although I am never sure of whom “they” are – is history.

1958 – Mark

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The summer of 1958, you turned two years old.  You were a joyful little towhead and my constant companion.  Since I was a whole four years older than you, you thought I was the absolute boss of the universe and I seriously accepted that role.  Larry was now the baby of the family and it seemed to me that given the very slight age difference of sixteen months, your babyhood was shortchanged.  Babies take up so much time and since you were a toddler and potty trained, Larry naturally absorbed all of Mom’s available time, and you were left in the care of a six year old.  We played “school” and even though I was only finishing the first grade, I would sit you down and you would obediently pick up a pencil and scribble on the paper and I pretended that you could write all of your numbers and letters as well as your name.  Of course, I had the brightest student.  I was the confident teacher and mother figure to you.

That confidence dissolved one afternoon in the split second action of a six year old.  What began as a protective gesture from a six year old to her innocent charge turned into the first bodily injury to you, and a nightmare that still brings tears to my eyes.

There you were, sitting next to me on the top bunk in the bedroom.  You were just playing with whatever this and that you found on the bed while I silently read my book.  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched in horror as you placed the sharp hook end of a wire clothes hanger inside of your mouth.  Thinking only that it was  dangerous, I sprang into action and grabbed the hanger from your hand, not realizing that as I frantically pulled, the hook was scraping a hole through the inside of your cheek and literally collecting bits of fleshy tissue on the hanger itself.  You did not realize the pain until, both of us looking at the blood and tissue on the hanger, began to cry.  You immediately held out your arms for me to comfort you and we held each other as I cried in stark realization of what I had done to my baby brother and you screeched in unimaginable pain.  Blood from your baby mouth poured onto both of us and the bed as well.  I am certain it was merely seconds until Mom appeared and all I remember of that was Mom angrily screaming at me and you crying as she pulled you out of my arms and into safety – away from me.  You were not taken to the emergency room.  Mom called Dr. Tupper and he told her how to care for the wound with hydrogen peroxide (more baby screams) and some baby aspirin to help with the pain.  After what seemed like hours, but was probably more like several minutes, you had cried yourself out and drifted off to sleep in Mom’s arms.

Aside from overwhelming guilt, I also knew I was in big trouble.  In our house, there was never such thing as an “accident”.   If milk was spilled at the dinner table (and with six kids, it often was), it was spilled because someone was “horsing around”.  If something got torn or broken, it was because someone didn’t care how many hours Daddy had to work to pay for things.  And, if someone got hurt, it was because someone else was just being mean.

I wasn’t allowed to come near you.  I sat, sobbing to sniffling and back to sobbing, in the living room waiting for Dad to come home in answer to Mom’s call that “Connie ripped Markie’s mouth with a clothes hanger”, somehow making it sound like a planned action.  I only feared disappointment from Daddy, as it was his strict belief and rule, that girls should never be spanked.  I hated the thought that he would be upset and disappointed with me for what I had done.  But, he was a reasonable man and I was certain that he would understand the situation as I explained.  Not so.

No explanation on my part was solicited or allowed.  As I was ready to defend myself to Daddy, I was told to shut up and get in the car.  I had no shoes on as was the custom for most kids on a sunny Colorado summer day.  I dutifully followed instructions and walked barefoot to the car and slid in the back seat.  I never questioned where we were going – actually, never even thought to do so.  But what happened next left me shaken and wounded both physically and mentally.

The State Home and Training School located in what was then the far outskirts of town, consisted of several buildings housing and educating around 800 adults and children with different levels of what was then referred to as “mental retardation”.  I volunteered close to 100 hours at the facility in my teen years, but at the age of six, I was totally unaware of the building and its use.  So, when my Daddy told me that high fenced compound was an orphanage, what else was I to believe?  The gates were locked and no car was allowed to enter without a security code.  But, what I was told was that the gate was closed for the day, and since I was being given to the orphanage, I would need to wait until they “opened” in the morning.  Since I had no shoes, Daddy carried me over to a concrete slab outside the fence which was probably about nine square feet, stood me up, returned back to the car and drove away.  I remember standing for quite a while, watching for the car to appear.  After about an hour, I started to cry while walking around the little slab and then sat for a few minutes and then resume pacing.  Since it was early evening when Daddy even got home from work, the sun was now beginning to set.  It wasn’t near dark, but being such a prissy little girl who was deathly afraid of any kind of bug, terror fully encompassed me.  It was getting darker still, so that I could not see more than a few feet in front of my face, when I saw headlights approaching.  I desperately wanted it to be Daddy so I could back to the safety of my bedroom.  By the same token, I was furious that my normally over-protective father would place me in that type of situation.  He knew how afraid I was of insects and lizards, and yet he left me there with no protection.  And worse yet, I felt insecure, unloved, and unnecessary.  There were other occurrences between my Daddy and I; and each one of these chipped away at my self-esteem and for my entire life, I tried to build myself up in his eyes.  I never really thought I did.

Daddy remained seated in the driver’s seat staring ahead at the empty road.  I waited for a moment before I walked barefoot through the thistles and atop the jagged little rocks, fearing that if I approached the car uninvited, I would be turned away.  The drive home took about thirty minutes.  I ran from the car into the house and immediately drew a warm bubble bath to soak the dirt from my feet and the pain in my heart before I could settle into my bed for the night.  I do not recall either parent speaking to me about that day and night ever again.  It was as though nothing ever happened.

The next morning I was happily awakened by your little hands resting on my cheeks and your toddler words “wake up, Sissy.  I hungry!”  Music to my heart.