The Barn Installments 1-37

 

The Barn by Judy Logan Wheeler

 

Prologue

 

Before I start my account of living at The Barn, I thought it behooved me to give the reader a foundation of what my family life was like pre-barn. Lois Davenport is my mom's maiden name. She married a man named Charles Walker Logan, "Buck", when she was 17. She told me she didn't really want to marry him but he threatened to kill himself by jumping off a cliff if she didn't marry him. He was 30, divorced, and had a daughter by his first wife. Mom said she was too young and dumb to tell him to go ahead and jump or she would have. Also, her parents approved the marriage. She had 4 children with Buck, Jesse, Josh, me, and Jeni. She divorced Dad(reasons: alcoholism, physical abuse, infidelity) when I was about 4, long about November 1959. According to my Uncle David, she rambled around a bit with we children, landed in Klamath Falls for awhile, Waldport for awhile. UD(Uncle David) wanted her to settle in Kfalls, but she wouldn't have it. She wanted to go live on the old Davenport Homestead, which was way up South Track, past the old log dump which was at the end of Wright Creek Road, Lincoln County, Oregon. Uncle David transported Mom to ye olde homestead, along with a ton of groceries to last us for at least a month, and said he would come back to check on us. I do not recall any of these events and only have my uncles recitation to go on. He said later, when he went back to check on us, we were gone. Somehow, Mom took all of us away to God knows where. I talked to my older brother, Jesse, today about the old homestead and he doesn't remember living there, either. What I did find out from Jesse is that before Mom and Dad were divorced, they separated and we did move to Waldport, Oregon for awhile. At some point after their divorce, Mom took we children to our dad and asked him to take care of us while she prepared a home for us somewhere in Nevada. Mom had been working as a cocktail waitress and bartender in, I believe Elko, NV, when she met Dallas Heard, her 2nd husband.(A whole other story here) When she left us with our dad, he filed for temporary custody of us and claimed Mom abandoned us. I was 4 years old. For the next 18 months, we lived with Dad and our stepmom, Bonnie. He married her very quickly so as to have a mother at home taking care of his children while he worked. Bonnie was a horrible stepmother. We children were miserable living with her. That's all I'll say about that for now. Mom worked hard for 18 months to get the $500 bond she was court ordered to get so that she could come to Kingman, AZ and get her children. She also visited whenever she could during those long 18 months we had to live without her and sent gifts to us. Many times, Bonnie and Dad lied to us and said they had gotten the gifts for us, such as the Easter baskets and Christmas presents Mom sent. When Mom and Dallas finally came to pick us up in June of 1961, I was so happy I could have cried. Mom asked each one of us kids which parent we wanted to be with. We all chose her. I wanted both my parents and said so, but Mom told me that wasn't possible. So I chose her. I remember Bonnie begging Mom to take Jesse and Josh and leave me and Jeni with her and Dad. I was scared when I heard her saying this, but I needn't be because it didn't happen. I was so happy when we all drove away from our home on Phoenix Avenue. A ways up the road, I whispered in Mom's ear, "Mom, I don't like you. I love you." It brings tears to my eyes even now when I think of it. I was free of Bonnie. So were my siblings. That brings me to the prologue part of this story. That day started a 10 year journey moving from state to state several times a year. You see, Dallas was wanted by the law in MO for going AWOL from the army. So we never stayed any one place for very long for the next 10 years until we moved to the barn. We went to Newport, OR from Kingman. Then we went to Toledo, OR and that's where I started 1st grade. We moved from Toledo to Blanchard, IA, then from IA to AZ, then AZ to OR, and so on and so on. The IA and MO connection was Dallas' family. They all lived in the midwest. The towns we lived in in IA were Blanchard, where Dallas' parents lived. A lot of his siblings lived close by. We also lived in Shenandoah and Coin. We lived in Tarkio, Rockport, and Phelps City, MO. In AZ, we lived in Kingman and Bullhead City. In Oregon, we lived in Toledo, Newport, Eugene, Portland, Fall Creek, and Sandy. From the time I started 1st grade, I attended at least 2 different schools in 2 different states each grade and some years 3 schools in 3 states. The only grade where I started and finished the whole year in one school was when we lived in Blanchard and I attended school in College Springs my 7th grade year. It was one of the best years of my life, being able to go to one school the whole year. The next year when I started the 8th grade, about a month into it one day, Mom told me that were were moving to Oregon the next day. I was devastated. That's how we always got told we were moving. It was sprung on us the day before we left. Usually, I kept my mouth shut and just went along with what I was told. But I was so angry that we were moving that I blurted out, "NOOO!" I finally had friends that I loved and got to hang out with now and then. I had made a new friend in school who was diabetic. She was so nice and was teaching me all about diabetes. I had nice clothes that I made for myself. I felt settled for the first time in my life. And it was all going to be taken away from me...again. Mom told me and Jeni to go see our friends and say goodbye. So we did. We were all crying our eyes out. I let out a gut wrenching scream about a block from home and Mom came running because she thought I was hurt. I wasn't hurt physically, but I was in pain to the core of my soul. And I knew there was nothing I could do about the move. So, I bucked up as usual, packed as much as I could very quickly, and the next day, I was in the old Ford Econoline riding shotgun with my brother Josh at the wheel. We were a 3 vehicle caravan, Dad leading in an old Ford truck with side racks that held most of our belongings. Dallas JR and Daniel rode with Dad. Mom was in a 57 Chevy with either me or Jeni, Brenda, Bonnie, and baby Audry. Audry screamed for miles and we finally put her and me in the Econoline with Josh, bringing up the rear. Audry rode on the motor cover of the Ford and didn't make a peep the rest of the trip. So my brother Josh, who was 16, was driving, I was 14 riding in the passenger seat and baby Audry, 3 month old, was riding quietly on the motor cover, all the way to Oregon. Two kids taking care of a baby. I don't even think Josh had a drivers license, but then, it was October, 1969. We traveled as far as Montana and ran out of money, so we stopped in Seeley Lake, MT. Mom had a cousin there, Irene, and her husband and family. We stayed with them for awhile. Dad got a job at a mill and eventually, we got our own home. We were only there for a couple months. I don't even think we stayed through Christmas. I had my first boyfriend in Seeley Lake. I cried over him when I left, but got over it quickly. I didn't even want a boyfriend in the first place. He kind of insinuated himself on me and I went along with it. He was nice enough but I really wasn't interested in boys at all. From Montana we went to Portland to Uncle David and AM's(Aunt Mary) place. From there, Dallas found a job mechanicing at a gas station and we moved into a small duplex on a hazelnut farm, then when Dad made enough money, we moved into a really nice house east of Sandy, Oregon. I loved that house. It was very nice and had lots of room for our big family. The small duplex had 2 bedrooms. For a family of 10, it wasn't even adequate. I slept on the sofa. I think Jeni did, too. Anyway, the home we lived in east of Sandy, OR is the last home we had before we moved to the barn. I started 8th grade in College Springs, IA, attended school in Seeley Lake, MT for a few months, and finished up in Sandy, OR. The summer of 70, we moved from east of Sandy to the barn.

 

 

Installment 1

 

So, here's a true story. Back in 1970, my family and I moved from east of Sandy Oregon to east of Toledo Oregon. The day was August 18th, 1970. It was a beautiful warm sunny day. It was my sister Jeni's 14th birthday. I was 15. We had lived in a really nice home out in the country past Sandy Oregon. There was a beautiful big yard, blackberries, Marionberries, and Loganberries. There was a beautiful view of Mount Hood out the front picture window. I really loved that home. My parents wanted to buy the home but the owner backed out at the last minute. So, my parents bought 40 acres on the Yaquina River East of Toledo, Oregon. They had bought this property previously in 1960. Why they didn't hang on to it I don't know. We had to diagonally cross the river to get to the property. There was a dock on the roadside and on the property side. There was a big white barn that sat on the lower 11 acres of river frontage property. Behind the barn about 25 ft were the railroad tracks that ran to Toledo and also out to Corvallis. Every time the train went by it shook the house like there was an earthquake going on. The other 29 acres of property were mountains directly behind the barn. There was a canyon between the two mountains where a two-story Victorian style house sat. There was also a natural spring that ran down the canyon which is where we got our water. The house had been abandoned by the people that lived there before. Mom told me they came home late one night and all died while crossing the river because they hit a dead head and wrecked the boat that they were in. Getting back to the house, it was completely full of nothing but junk and rat nests. There was knee-deep clothes and garbage scattered everywhere on the floors. The cupboards were filled to the brim with dried out blackberry stems that had been used to build rat nests and there were rat nests in the attic. Windows were broken out as well. The place reeked of rat pee. We couldn't move into the house so we had to move into the barn. It was quite a chore using the boat to get all our belongings from the roadside to the barn. I can't even remember how many trips we made back and forth across the river to move all our furniture, our boxes, and the heavy appliances to the barn. At the time we moved in, my stepdad was still working in Portland so he was only there on the weekends. My older brother Josh was also working in Portland. I need to digress for a moment here. When we moved to the barn, we were a family of 9 out of 11 people. My oldest brother, Jesse, was in Vietnam at the time of our move. Josh had a girlfriend, Sue, in Portland that he wanted to marry so he helped us move into the barn then went back to Portland. That left Mom, eventually dad, me, my other younger siblings Jeni, Brenda, Bonnie, Dallas, Daniel, and Audry moving into the barn permanently. Once we got everything moved into the barn, it was hard work getting things set up to where we could live. There was no electricity when we first moved in and there was no bathroom. We moved Mom and Dad's great big old bed and the bunk beds upstairs into the loft. At the back of the barn, there was nothing but a wooden ladder that led up to a loft door that we had to navigate to get our things upstairs. It got pretty tricky balancing things from below to hand them to somebody up above. Mom left the kitchen supplies and furniture downstairs the first week or so we lived there. As I recall we got the electricity hooked up in a couple of days. All Mom had in the beginning was an electric deep fryer to cook with. So, she made homemade bread and wrapped pieces of it around sausage and hot dogs and deep-fried them. We would open cans of vegetables and eat cold vegetables to go along with the homemade bread and sausage. We also had fresh fruit. I told you all that so I could tell you this next story. Mom and dad had one of those old-style beds that had the big solid 6-foot headboard and a solid footboard that stuck up above the mattress about 6 inches. It was a very dark color and I think it was Oak because it was heavy. If I remember correctly, Mom let Audry, Dallas, and Daniel sleep with her. Audry was only 15 months old, Dallas was 6 and Daniel was 4 years old. Jenny and I slept in the bunk beds with Brenda who was 9 and Bonnie, 8 years old. Now would be a good time for me to mention that the barn was also full of rats and they liked to come out at night time. We could hear them scurrying all over the place. We aren't talking small house rats. These rats were the size of a small cat. I don't know about the rest of my siblings, but I hunkered down under my blankets and tucked them in as tightly as I could before I could fall asleep. The thought of a rat crawling over my body was repulsive and scary. Mom had a 22 pistol and a 30/30 rifle. She took the 22 pistol to bed with her. One of the first couple nights that we slept in the barn I was laying under my covers wondering how long it would take me to get to sleep because of all the scurrying noise of the rats running around the barn. I had always been the type of a child that could get through any type of crisis. But this was something I had not experienced and it freaked me a little bit. (If you only knew the half of it. Maybe you will before this virus isolation is over) All of a sudden, I heard the 22 pistol go BOOM! I jumped up out of my bed and yelled "Mom what's going on!" She said, very calmly, "Go back to bed, Judy. There was a rat on the end of the bed and I killed it." I took a deep breath, crawled back into bed, and braced myself for the next shot. Instead I heard Mom get up and dispose of the rat. That was my mom. Tucked into bed with her little children, nerves of steel, shooting rats off the end of her bed, and doing whatever else it took to protect her children no matter what the situation.

So started my life in the summer of 1970, living at The Barn. It was a beautiful place but it was hard living. Maybe the next story will be about what we used for a bathroom in the first couple months we lived there. I'll give you a hint: ON STAGE!

Not even close to The End😁

The Barn, Installment 2

Let me start this story by saying if you haven’t read the first story I posted, you probably should before reading this one. Installment 1 gives needed background for the reader to totally assimilate what comes next. I don’t know how long I will go on with these installments. It appears that the virus epidemic is going to go on longer than previously predicted. There are certain things I can do to totally distract myself and writing is one of them. I haven’t really sunk myself into writing for quite some time. Now seems as good a time as any to brush up on my writing skills.
The Barn…what a unique place to live. As a teenager of 15, I wasn’t overly thrilled to have moved from a really nice home into a barn where cows used to live. But, as I mentioned earlier, I was the type of kid who did what was asked of me, gutted my way through the hard times, because resistance always made things more difficult. I tried to see everything as an adventure. And living on the Yaquina River in a barn was a huge adventure. I was the oldest daughter, had 2 older brothers, so a great amount of responsibility was heaped upon my shoulders at a young age. But that’s another chapter. Let’s see what’s going on in the early days of The Barn.
We were living in the loft of the barn. It was infested with rats, dirty, had no windows. It did have two big swinging doors on the front that we could open that lent us a beautiful view of the river and across the river, the neighbor’s pasture where 2 horses lived. We had to be very careful when the doors were open because a small child could easily fall out to their death. We had no bathroom. We had 9 people with bladders and bowels that worked perfectly. We also had a 5-gallon galvanized bucket that would have to serve as a toilet until we got a real bathroom installed. So, Mom decided the best thing to do was hang up a couple of blankets in a corner and put the bucket behind the blankets. I was concerned about someone walking in on me while I was doing my business. So, we decided to use the phrase, ON STAGE, when we were using the pot. This phrase yelled out in a loud voice let everyone know, within earshot, that the blanketed area was off limits. It was never 100% guaranteed that one of the little children wouldn’t walk in on one while one was in a squatting position. But it helped regulate the toilet traffic to some degree. The downside of having a 5-gallon bucket full of bodily fluids and waste in the loft of a barn is that it had to be emptied. That was the responsibility of me and sister Jeni. It wasn’t a pleasant chore at all. But it was a fact of life and had to be dealt with. So, when the bucket was full, we tied a rope onto the handle. One of us would stay in the loft and lower the bucket to the person on the ground floor. Then, the bucket had to be carried down to the dock and be emptied into the river. Now before you environmentalists get all up in arms about emptying waste into a river, remember, this was 1970 and we didn’t have a lot of choices in this matter. I’m not ashamed to say that, because I was the oldest daughter, I used my family position status to man the loft position and do the lowering. There was more than one time that the bucket didn’t get emptied when it should have and it was within an inch of the top, which made lowering it very tricky. You think using an outhouse is a challenge? Try a 5 gallon bucket behind a blanket! I’ll let your imaginations fill in the rest of the story.

Isn't this fun? Until the next installment!

The Barn, Installment 3.

When we moved to The Barn, there was less than a month before Jeni and I started our freshman year of high school. We knew no one, which wasn’t unusual circumstances for us. When Mom married our stepdad, Dallas, we started moving around 2-3 times a year for almost 10 years. When we finally landed east of Toledo, Oregon in 1970, although we had not moved into ideal circumstances, I felt like this would be the last move for me before I graduated from high school and got on with my life. I remember the weeks leading up to the first day of school. It was a hectic time. Not only did I have to help get things as organized as possible in the barn, I also had to keep track of my younger siblings. Once we got all of our belongings from the roadside to the barn, we concentrated on getting the barn set up to live in as comfortably as possible. As I said earlier, we left furniture, except for beds, and kitchen things downstairs. In between all the business of surviving, I would escape down to the dock and dip my feet into the water while enjoying the warm sunshine on my shoulders. When I actually had time, I and my siblings would put on bathing suits and swim in the Yaquina. We had to be careful because the river was controlled by the ocean tides. When the tide was coming in, there were plenty of dangerous undertows but when it went out, the currents were worse. So, we usually swam when the time was coming in. Jeni and I quickly learned how to do log rolling contests on the logs that held the dock to the bank. I was the champion log roller and no one could beat me. I loved being out in the country and across the river. I felt safe and secure there because, unless one knew the way over the mountain and had a 4-wheel drive, or a boat to navigate up the river, guests were dependent on one of us picking them up by taking the boat from our dock to the roadside dock. There was a protocol quickly established in regard to how someone visiting would let us know they were there. Coming from town, there was a curve in the road right before a straight stretch that led to the dock on the roadside. As soon as the vehicle rounded the corner and caught sight of the barn, they would start honking and continue honking until they parked. That was our version of a doorbell. I quickly learned how to run the boat motor and navigate the river, watching for dead heads and random things that would cause damage to the boat if there was a collision.  Most of the time, crossing the river and picking up guests was my job. I loved taking the boat up the river, wind in my hair, the smell of motor oil and gas in my nose. It was one of the rare times I got to be alone, even if only for a minute or two. And, I felt I had a certain prestige in the family because I could run the boat just as well as anyone else in the family.

After school started, somewhere along October or November, Jeni and I were given the job of cleaning out the old house up in the canyon behind the barn and the railroad tracks. It was an extremely horrible job. The house was still full of the last tenants’ belongings and huge rats had made a mess of everything. It was a job that I would never wish on my worst enemy. The kitchen had the tall type cupboards that went to the ceiling and every one of them was stuffed to overflowing with rat nests. Jeni and I had to take a pitchfork to pull all the filthy nests out of the cupboards. We actually argued over who was going to do this because we were afraid of stabbing a live rat that might be living in these nests. I finally took the pitchfork and thought, “It’s now or never, whatever happens, happens” and sunk it into the top shelf full of old blackberry bushes. As the nests fell down to the floor, a rat went running out of the mess and headed to the first place he could find to get out. It unnerved me and Jeni and we didn’t want to continue, but we knew Mom would not take no for an answer, so after an excited conversation about whether or not the rat got stabbed, we went forth and managed to get the rest of the nests cleaned out of the cupboards. I don’t recall whether or not we ran into another live rat. If we did, I have tucked it away so far in my subconscious that it will never surface. At least, I hope it doesn’t. No matter how clean we got that house, it still reeked of rat piss. And skunk.  But that will have to wait for installment 4.

The Barn, Installment 4.

Being as how I am going to be busy tomorrow with my trip to Wildlife Safari, I decided to write another installment so I don’t miss a day and stay on track. So, without any further ado, I give you “Lois and the Skunk.”

Mom always had to do things her way. She was very single minded, stubborn, and did NOT want anyone suggesting or anyone telling her what to do. I guess that’s where I get it, now that I think about it. Too bad I didn’t have that understanding about her when I was young. It would have saved me a lot of long lectures and butt chewing’s for not keeping my yap shut.  Anyway, once Mom deemed the old, rat infested home fit and clean enough to live in, we proceeded to move ourselves and all our belongings into it. I would have rather slept outdoors. But it was fall and rain was coming down in buckets full. Jeni and I had a room upstairs. Because of the age of the house and how it had been abandoned for years and years, and the rats infestation, (I know, I keep coming back to those long tailed, dark gray haired devils) the ceiling above our bed was bowed down from the weight of the nests above it. Let me digress a moment. When Mom first decided it would be a good idea to move us all up into the house from Rat Hell while she and dad worked on the barn, she went to the local feed store to buy rat poison. She explained to the proprietor the details of the property, that it had been abandoned years before, and it was overrun with rats. She wondered how much poison it would take to kill all the vermin in the house and the barn.  The man told her that, based on what she told him, there was probably a colony of 500 to 1000 rats living in the house and about half that many in the barn. He told her no amount of poison would get rid of them all and the best thing to do to the house would be to burn it down. So, getting back to my story, Jeni and I would lay in our bed at night with the blankets completely pulled up around our heads, listening to the rats scurrying around in their nests above the ceiling, hoping that the ceiling wouldn’t cave in on us. I knew I could tough out a lot of things, but I didn’t know if I could survive a rat avalanche onto my bed while I was in it. I’m sure if that had happened, I would have become a mental case. You would think that the rats would have been enough to deal with, but no. We also had a skunk. Yup, a real, bonafide, white stripe down the middle of its back, Pepe Le Pew, skunk. He was able to get into the house at night through a small hole in the bottom of the stairway. It would come in and make itself comfortable, snooping, waving its furry tail hither and dither, leaving a potent scent everywhere it went. Mom stuffed some rags into the hole and, of course, that didn’t work. The skunk pulled them out.  I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t nail a small piece of wood over the hole the skunk was going through. I didn’t dare suggest it for reasons mentioned earlier. I knew Mom had her own plan and it didn’t include suggestions from her children. Of course, it didn’t take long for me to find out the reason why Mom didn’t block the hole. She wanted to sit up at night, pistol in hand, and shoot it! And she did. She sat patiently waiting for the skunk to stick its little head out the hole in the bottom stair so she could blast the little bastard. It eventually happened, guns a blazin, waking up the whole house and, boy, howdy, shooting at that skunk was not the right thing to do. His scent glands went off and within minutes, Mom and all of us children were outside in the cold, wet rain, choking and hacking, barely able to breathe. If I remember right, we all ran down to the barn and went in for cover. Mom, of course, was madder than an old wet hen because she didn’t know if the scent glands went off because the skunk was dead or because she scared it so bad that he blasted us with stink in return. Whatever it was, we were all bathed in the strong, pungent, aroma of skunk, which put us all in a foul mood. I guess we must have washed up as good as we could and eventually hunkered down back in the house in our beds. Mom had opened all the windows and doors to air out the house, not that it did much good. The next day was Sunday. Jeni and I proceeded to take every piece of clothing in the house and do laundry. It was a futile effort. No matter how much we washed our clothing, every item reeked of skunk odor. Bleach didn’t work at all to lessen the aroma. Jeni and I had to go to school that way and it was probably the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me in high school. I can still remember the dress I had on that day. I chose it because it had the least amount of skunk mojo on it. Weird that I can remember that small detail.  Anyway, Jeni and I lockered together and after first period, we went to get our books for the next class. We opened the locker and the scent of skunk permeated the hallway in seconds. I remember other students saying, “What’s that smell? Oh God, it’s horrible!”  I wanted to shrivel up and die but I didn’t. I stoically stood at my locker as if nothing was wrong, got my books for the next class, and went about my business. Eventually, after a few more washings, the smell was gone from our clothing. We soon moved down to the barn after it was remodeled enough to sustain people, and as far as I can recall, we never dealt with a skunk again. Getting out of that disgusting, rat infested house was probably the best day of my life before the birth of my sons. Now that I think of it, I got ahead of myself. Before we moved into the old house, there was an interesting, scary, incident in the barn that I must tell you about. But that can wait until the next installment.

Toodles for now!

The Barn, Installment 5.
I missed yesterday. Dang! But, the nice thing about waking up each day is that you can get back up on the horse and get things done. So, I swore by the end of this day, I would get installment 5 posted.
It was fun getting to know the 40-acre farm when we first moved there. The bottom 11 acres of river frontage were amazing. There was all this land to run around on, a mountain to climb, and a river to swim and splash in. We had a lot of things to do to get the barn in order so that it was livable but we also had time to have fun. There was something about being close to the river and mountains that filled my soul with peace and contentment. Yes, Yes, I was irritated and annoyed about moving from a perfectly good home into a barn, in fact, when my brother, Jesse, got back from Vietnam later on that year, the first thing he said to Mom, when he got across the river was, “I never thought I’d see my family living in a goddamn barn.” But the longer we stayed there, the more I loved it, regardless of the extreme challenges we had just to survive. And, moving there in the middle of August gave us the opportunity to enjoy beautiful weather before fall and winter was upon us.
I mentioned that we had moved only beds, blankets, and a few other items upstairs into the loft and left all the furniture and kitchen items downstairs. Mom wanted to wait until a decent stairway was built before hauling sofas, dressers, and chairs upstairs. And, she didn't really know where she wanted to put the kitchen. I'm laughing at that last sentence because...well, that's a story for another installment. Anyway, one night, within a few days of moving in, we were all upstairs and it was starting to get dark. We were eating something cold and by lantern because the electricity had not yet been turned on. Suddenly, we heard this god-awful noise downstairs. Mom shushed all of us and said to stay still. We all silenced ourselves so we could hear what was going on. It sounded like all mom’s kitchen things were being thrown around. The canned goods, the food canisters, the table and chairs, dishes, silverware, everything was banging around very loudly. This went on for a good half hour. At one point, Ma whispered, “I think there is a bear down there.” We were all very frightened and staying as still as a statue until Ma said it was safe to move. Even little baby Audry knew she had to be still. Daniel, for the first time since he learned to talk, didn't say a word, Praise Jesus! Mom had the rifle ready to shoot anything that came up the ladder. I very softly asked her if a bear could climb the ladder and she said, yes, but that he wouldn’t be able to get through the door because it had a big sliding dead bolt lock on it. Mom waited a long time after things became silent downstairs before she, Jeni, and I opened the loft door and ventured down to see the damage. It was horrible. We had to use flashlights and it was as though an 8-point earthquake had happened. Every bit of food we had that wasn’t canned had been gotten into and either eaten or strewn around. There was flour and sugar all over the place. The table and chairs were helter-skelter and the sofa had been clawed to pieces. I’m not sure why a wild animal would rip open a sofa, but this one did. Mom sighed and said, “Let’s go to bed and we will get up in the morning and clean it all up.” See, we entered the barn through a sliding wooden door on the east side of the building. It was closed when we went to bed but somehow, the bear had figured out how to get around getting it opened up enough to get in. Eventually, Dad put a sliding glass door in where the sliding wooden door was. The next day, we started cleaning up and Mom rigged up something to keep the door closed as tight as possible until the sliding glass door was put in. We didn’t have another visit from the bear as I recall. It seems odd that it didn’t make another appearance, knowing there was food in the place.
So, that is one of the scary things that happened to us when we moved into The Barn. There are many more amusing, interesting, scary stories to be told and they will be in future installments. I hope you that are reading my barn accounts are enjoying them. I know I am enjoying remembering and, finally, I am getting a good start on the book I have been wanting to write for many years. In the picture below, I used my Paint 3-D program to add in a crude sketch of where the barn would have been. It helps the reader to have a mental picture.

The Barn, Installment 6, 7, and 8.

A long time ago, on a farm in Oregon far, far away…LOL.

I’m going to begin these next installments with a song I wrote about The Barn after it burned to the ground sometime in the early 80’s. I was probably about 27. It’s called, what else, The Barn. I have a couple of recordings of the song that I have posted in the past. When I sit down with my guitar to play this song, most of the time I get choked up and can’t finish because of the emotion I feel about the years of memories I have of that wonderful, unique place.

Verse 1: I was 15 when we moved into the barn.

Stood down by the river on a 40-acre farm.

We had 9 children and mom and dad

Didn’t know just what we had.

Memories are sweet of the barn.

Verse 2: We had to cross the river to get to that old barn.

So, daddy bought a boat that didn’t have much charm.

When folks came to visit, they would jump into the boat.

Always bailing water, I’m surprised we stayed afloat.

Life was never dull at the barn.

Chorus:

It was big and white against the pines

An old fruit orchard back behind.

An evening train that nearly shook us from our skins.

Nights were short and days were long

But we sure loved out country farm.

I’d give my live to have those feelings once again.

Verse 3: Years have come and gone since we lived out at the barn.

Mom and dad divorced, and the children all moved on.

But even though the barn burned down, turning all to ashes on the ground

I’ll always have my memories…of The Barn.

Flooding. The first year we lived at The Barn, fall and winter brought more rain than usual and the river flooded the banks and came up to within a few inches of coming into the barn. The reason this happened is because the tide would come in and go out twice a day. So, the tide coming in combined with the creeks and rivers that emptied into the Yaquina caused the river to overflow its banks. It was quite a surreal feeling to look out the sliding glass door and see nothing but water from the railroad tracks to the road. Our pasture and the neighbor’s pasture across the river, the McMillan’s, had both disappeared under water. The water got so high our dock and boat floated above the pilings and got carried away by the current. I remember the water was a dark rust color from all the sediment being washed down the river and the current was a constant swirl of rapid, violent waves. There was so much rain that, even when the tide went out, the level of the river only dropped a few inches. Out in the field, only the top half of the old pickup was showing. The rest was under water. I remember looking at the water six inches from coming into the house and wondering what would we do if the water came into the house. Mom told me we would just move upstairs until the river stopped swelling and receded. This situation only lasted a couple of days, but in my memory, it seemed to last forever. After the water receded, I don’t remember how, but Dad found the dock down the river towards Toledo, hung up on the bank, and was able to get it back up to the pilings and anchor it again.

Our First Christmas. The first Christmas we spent in the barn was very special. At least, to me, it was. We were not a family of substance. I don’t like to use the word poor because to me, that word means people who haven’t got a home or food to eat every day. We definitely lived an unorthodox life compared to others. But we had a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, food in our bellies, and we all loved one another. I felt a great responsibility to my younger siblings because I had helped raise every one of them from infancy. They were my babies. That’s how I felt about them. They were my first children and I still feel that way about them today. So, while living at the barn, I felt different, not poor, which is an entirely different emotion from feeling poor. I didn’t mind being different most of the time. It was most difficult to be different in high school. Students and teachers can be very cruel to anyone who isn’t “normal.” For me, I always knew deep down inside that what other people thought of me didn’t matter. I could take criticism and bullying, not internalize it, and know that the people who were dealing out the abuse were the ones with the problem. I had more important things to think about and didn’t let bullies take up space in my head. I had classes, homework, chores and family to think about and that was enough. Anyway, back to holiday time. Because of our humble financial circumstances, Mom always bought a big box of apples and oranges, a big box of the hard Christmas candy, and a big box of chocolates. We had 29 acres of trees on the mountain behind the barn, so one day, mom sent Dad and some of us kids out to get our first Christmas tree. I remember going up the first switchback, looking here and there for just the right tree. It was an adventure, exploring the mountain and seeing all the plant and animal life. And when I stopped to look down the mountain, the view of the river was breathtaking. There was a span of about 20 or so feet from the loft floor to the ceiling. I don’t remember who made the final decision on the tree, but when we got it down to the barn, it went clear up to the roof! Mom was not impressed, but she said she liked the tree. So, the next problem was how to keep it standing.  It was a very big, full, tall tree! I think Dad wired it to the beams that held up the tin roof and anchored it some way at the bottom. The next problem was, we could only decorate it so far up. And, we had a limited supply of Christmas ornaments and no money to purchase more. So, Mom as usual, offered ideas for making ornaments. We used empty egg cartons, cut up each space that held and egg, covered it in aluminum foil, and Voila! Christmas ornaments. We used any type of paper we could get ahold of and made paper chains. And, of course, we strung popcorn and wrapped it around the tree as far up as we could. When we got done, we had the most unusual tree ever!  It was decorated about 6 foot up and the rest of it was natural. Because we were a big family, long before we moved to Oregon, we had established drawing names and we carried on this tradition after moving to the barn. We had trees like that and name drawings every Christmas for the next 10 or so years. We may have been short on a lot of material things, but we had a barn full of love for one another. Another wonderful thing that happened that Christmas was that my brother, Jesse, was home from serving in Vietnam and able to spend Christmas with us. He wasn’t happy about his family living in a barn, but it didn’t take him long to look past his first impressions and grow to love the place.  Anyway, 1970 was still a time for a lot of social changes in the country. Unfortunately, Toledo was pretty much a red-necked community and didn’t welcome those who were different. East of town on highway 20, there was a hippie commune of young people who called themselves The Skyriver Family. Mom found out that they were shunned by the rest of the county and were not even allowed to buy groceries for themselves. How she knew this, I don’t know. I remember Mom telling me about this commune and that we were going to do something to help them.  Jesse was onboard as well and said helping these people was the right thing to do. We loaded up four or five big cardboard boxes full of our candy, oranges and apples, and food from our pantry, much of it Mom’s home canned goods, to give to this commune. Mom also donated clothing and blankets that were some of her homemade crazy quilts that she made out of old clothing. Mom never wasted anything. Jesse, Mom, and I loaded the stuff into the boat, took it across the river, put it all in the car, and headed to Toledo. I can still remember driving up to the house, knocking on the door, and having a couple of young men with long hair and full beards, coming out of the house to collect Mom’s donation. They were very friendly to us and very thankful for the food, clothing, and blankets. I remember this being a really poignant lesson in my life about being charitable to people, no matter who they are or how they live their lives. And the example was set by my Mom. She was the type of woman who would give you the shirt off her back if you asked. She was not held to this world by material possessions and I believe that is why she passed away so peacefully.

There was a neighbor up the river towards Elk City, name of Chuck Fritz, who shared a property line with us on the river frontage land. He was a bachelor, lived alone in an old cabin, and went to town a few times a week to get drunk. He claimed the dock on the road side belonged to him, which it didn’t, and he didn’t want to share with us.  He always tied his boat up in such a way that there was no room for us to dock our boat when we had to cross the river to the road to make a trip to town. We would navigate up to the dock, untie his boat and move it farther up the dock and tie it back up so that we could have room to dock our boat. He saw my family as intruders and was rude, crude, and socially unacceptable from the beginning. He had cows and had been pasturing his cattle on our property as well as his own. The second spring and summer we lived on the farm, Mom wanted to put in a huge garden to help add to the pantry and lower the grocery bill, so the previous winter, she asked old Fritz to fix his fence to keep HIS cattle on his side so that they wouldn’t trample her garden. Mom was always civil to people and treated them kindly…the first time. If they responded negatively, Lord have mercy on their souls. Fritz was pissed off when we moved onto the property because he now had to share the dock with us. He was also pissed because he had had free run with his cattle and he thought he should get to keep running his cattle freely. He was also a perv because he made lewd comments about Mom’s 2 beautiful teenage daughters that didn’t set well with her. Chuck was a bully and he thought, because Dad wasn’t around, that he could bully this short, petite woman who had a house full of children. Boy, was he wrong. He rode a horse from his property to ours. The only way I can think of to describe him is, he was the bad guy in a western. He would run his horse through our property, whipping the shit out of the horse’s rump the whole time. He would run the horse full speed right at the wooden deck that was outside the sliding door on the barn and right before he got to the deck, he would reign the horse in, then ride up on the deck in an aggressive, intimidating manner, appearing to not be aware of any of the small children that were about. I was a young, innocent teenage girl of 15, but I knew he was trying to be impressive and inside, I was laughing at his antics. One day he rode up to the barn and wanted to talk to Mom about something. During the course of the conversation, he made the remark that her daughters were “ripe for the pickings.” He finally brought mom to her breaking point. She excused herself, went into the barn, and came out with the 30-30 rifle. She pointed it squarely at his head and told him to get the hell off her property and if he ever came back, she would waste him. His face went white, he froze for a few seconds, then jerked the reigns on his horse and rode away. As I recall, he never came back to the barn again and he was always polite if we happened to be at the dock together.

The Barn, Installment 9.

For this installment, I would like to lay a foundation for how we ended up in Oregon at The Barn.  In 1961, when I was 5 years old, me and my Logan siblings were living with our dad and, for lack of a better description, wicked stepmother. I won’t go into the how and why right now that we were not with our mother for 18 months of living hell. Suffice it to say for now that Mom did not abandon us, was a victim of shady dealings, and had to go through hell and jump through many hoops to get we children back. I can still remember the day Mom finally retrieved us from Kingman, AZ. She had met my stepdad, was married to him, and was 7 months pregnant with Brenda. I didn’t feel safe and secure in the knowledge that I got to be back with my mom until I was in the car and we were driving away. For 18 months, every time Mom tried to visit us, my real dad and his wife would hide us and not answer the door. It was the cruelest thing a parent could do to their children. After we pulled out of the driveway, I remember leaning forward over the front seat and whispering these words in Mom’s ear: “Mom, I don’t like you. I love you.” She gave me a hug and told me she loved me, too. That was the moment we started an almost ten-year period between 1961 and 1970 that we moved from state to state to state. We went to Iowa from Kingman. That’s where Dallas’ family were from. We lived there for a while, then moved to Newport, Oregon. Then Toledo, then Kingman, then Iowa, then Oregon…and that’s how it went for a decade. We came to Oregon from Blanchard, Iowa in November of 1969. I have vivid memories of a Wednesday afternoon in September in Blanchard, IA. I got home from school and Mom told Jeni and I that we were going to be moving by the end of the week. My heart sank and I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew it was true. For years, we had been moving 2-3 times a year with no warning. Sometimes, we were awakened from a sound sleep, loaded into the car, and off we would go to Arizona, Oregon, Iowa or Missouri. I never got to finish a grade in one school until 7^th grade in College Springs, IA. When Mom sprung this latest bombshell that we were moving, I had just started my 8^th grade year in College Springs. I actually remember being excited about the prospect of going to school another year in the same school and being able to continue the friendships I had made. But it wasn’t to be. On that Wednesday, all my hopes and dreams for another good year of being in the same school were dashed into pieces. I had sewn all my own clothing and, not to brag, my clothes were the coolest, grooviest clothes, bar none. Mom had done well picking out fabric and patterns and I started learning how to sew when I was 8 years old so I didn’t need Mom’s help. I loved making my own clothes. It gave me such a sense of accomplishment. And now, this. Moving again. What a drag. Although I was extremely disappointed that we were going to move again, I accepted my fate and quickly started getting into moving mode. I didn’t even ask where we were going. Mom let Jeni and I have an hour to go visit our friends that night and tell them we were moving. As I sit here typing this story, I can feel the intense emotion that all of us young girls were experiencing at the time. We were all crying and lamenting the move that was only hours away. It was a very sad time and there was nothing could be done. Our friends walked us home and about a block before we got home, and I don’t know where it came from, but I let out a primeval scream that came from my gut. I could not hold it back. It was guttural, lamenting, and loud. I bet the whole town heard me. Mom heard the scream, came running up the sidewalk, and said, “Judy, what’s wrong!” For the first time in my life, at the age of 14, I told my mom through tears and intense emotion, “I DON’T WANT TO MOVE! I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE MY FRIENDS! PLEASE DON’T MAKE US GO!” Mom was very understanding, didn’t yell at me for scaring her, but didn’t tell me we weren’t going to move. So, again, that was that. I accepted my fate, swallowed my sorrow and sadness, and put my focus on the tasks at hand. The reason I’m telling you this is to lay a foundation for how we finally made our way west to Oregon. The day came quickly that the family all loaded up into 3 vehicles to head west. My oldest brother, Jesse, stayed behind. He was 17 and had a job with Missouri Beef Packers. Mom said he was a working man and let him make his own choice of going with us or staying in the Midwest. It was very difficult leaving him behind, but that’s just the way things were. Mom was the supreme ruler and what she said was law, but unfortunately, not always order. Dad drove a big 1947 International KB2(thanks Audry) truck with side racks and all of our belongings in the back of it.  My little brothers, Dallas and Dan, rode with him most of the way. Mom was in a 57 Chevy with Brenda and Bonnie, either Jeni or I, and 3-month-old baby Audry. Josh was assigned the old Ford Econoline van, the type that had the motor between the front seats. Jeni and I would take turns riding with him in the beginning. So off we went, a caravan of three vehicles, the International in the lead, the Ford in the middle, and the 57 Chevy bringing up the rear. When I reflect on the trip we made from Iowa to Oregon, we must have been a motley crew to observers. Two parents, 8 children, and 3 vehicles, driving across country like The Beverly Hillbillies. Except we didn’t end up in Beverly Hills. We ended up in Podunk, Oregon. LOL! We soon found out after leaving that Audry did not like traveling. She did nothing but lay in her car seat and scream and would not settle down. Hours later, we were stopped somewhere and Mom told me, “Judy, take this baby and ride with Josh for a while and see if she calms down.” So, I took Audry in her flimsy plastic car seat and put her on the motor cover of the old Ford, (no laws back then about child safety car seats) hanging on to her so she didn’t slide off. We took off and she immediately went silent. Here we kids are, Josh, 16 (I don’t think he had a driver’s license yet) driving a Ford Econoline, 3 on the tree, me, 14, in the passenger seat caring for a 4 month old baby, and Audry on the motor cover, all heading from Iowa to Oregon on the open road. I know we did it, can remember doing it, but when I think about it, I question the sanity of Mom and Dad at the time. But, back then, kids weren’t coddled like they are now. I started taking care of babies when I was 6 years old and by the time Audry came along, I had known what to do with a baby for years. And what I didn’t know, I adapted to very quickly and learned. I think now that’s called critical thinking. So, for most of the rest of the trip, Josh, Audry, and I were in the Ford. Jeni was stuck with Mom and the younger sisters. I remember Jeni wanting a turn in the Ford with Josh and Audry, because Mom was a bear when she drove. If anyone misbehaved, there was no mercy. She usually had her left hand on the steering wheel and the right hand wielding a long switch over the back of the front seat, whacking whoever happened to get in the way, whether they were guilty or not. I didn’t often use my status as the oldest daughter to get my way, but I remember on that particular trip, telling mom I was better suited to care for baby Audry than Jeni was and for once, Mom let me have my way. I kind of felt guilty leaving Jeni in the 57 Chevy with Mom for so many miles, but I also felt like I might blow a gasket if I had to do too many miles with Lois. Before we got to Oregon, we stopped in Wyoming and spent a few weeks with my Uncle Ellis and Aunt Joy. Joy was mom’s older sister. It was nice to get to see my aunt and uncle and cousins that I loved very much, but didn’t get to see often. They lived in Gillette, Wyoming on a ranch and it was a great place for a family of 10, moving across the country, to take a break. I loved the animals and the freedom I felt on their ranch. And I loved their home-grown oatmeal with home churned butter and sugar. I remember very fond memories of watching Uncle Ellis using his old cream separator and him explaining to me how it worked. Aunt Joy always got out her accordion and played it for us. She also had an old pedal organ that she would play. After we left Wyoming, we stopped in Seely Lake, Montana, where Mom’s cousin, Irene, lived.  We stopped because we ran out of money. Imagine that. We stayed with Aunt Irene and her family until Dad got a job at a local mill. We got our own home but only stayed there for a couple of months, just until Mom and Dad thought we had enough money to continue on to Oregon. I had never met Irene and her family so it was nice getting to know some more of the family that I had only heard of. We were welcomed and treated very well. Irene was ecstatic that we were there because she had just found out that she had to have some type of surgery. When we got to their home, Irene looked at Mom and said, “Oh, my god, I’m so glad you’re here, Lois! Now I won’t have to worry about who is going to take care of my family while I’m in the hospital!” I asked Mom later in private why Irene just assumed that Mom would step in and help without asking and Mom told me, “Because that’s what families do for one another.” It was in Seely Lake that I had my first boyfriend. I really didn’t want a boyfriend, but, the first couple days we were in town, Gilbert, Irene’s oldest son, took me, Jeni, and Josh and a bunch of his friends for a ride in his station wagon. He drove us up this mountain, then everyone rolled the windows down and yelled, FREEZE OUT! I thought it was kind of stupid to ride in a car with the windows down in freezing cold weather, but I guess that was their idea of fun. Most of you probably think I’m a goofball, but when I was younger, I had a serious side to me that often outweighed my twisted sense of humor. During the drive up the mountain, I had to sit by this guy name Pat. He decided he was going to hold my hand. I thought, oh, great, now what do I do? I didn’t want to jerk my hand away and embarrass him in front of all his friends. At some point, he kissed me and from that time on until we moved on to Oregon, I had a boyfriend. He was okay. Wasn’t pushy and didn’t try to steal my virginity. We just had fun, played football with his friends, and made out now and then. I sure didn’t feel the same way about him that I had felt about Bill, in Wyoming. I guess I forgot to tell you all about Bill. While at Aunt Joy’s place, I met this guy named Bill. I don’t even remember who he was in regard to the family. He wasn’t related but he knew my aunt and uncle. He was about 18 or 19. He and I hit it off immediately. We had an instant rapport and really liked one another. He was the first man that ever made my heart do flip flops. He had a motor cycle and let me ride behind him all the time. Aunt Joy wasn’t happy about Mom letting me ride with him but Mom said it was fine and perfectly innocent. And it was. There was no hand holding, no kissing, just two kids having fun together. We got very close while we were there visiting and Bill and I would search one another out constantly.  We just liked being together. I was very sad when we left Wyoming because I really did like that Bill guy. Every once in a while, I wonder what happened to him. Anyway, after we left Montana, I got over Pat very quickly. It was nice having a boyfriend, but to be honest, I just wasn’t into him seriously. So, on we trekked to Oregon from Montana, a caravan of vehicles full of people and household goods, cruising down the highway at anything but a record pace. I remember stopping at rest areas and getting strange looks from some people. Most people were friendly and liked to talk. We must have been an odd-looking group. The 57 Chevy was the dark rust and white color scheme. The Ford Econoline was green on bottom and white on top. I think the Old International was silver or some sort of grey color. I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like for strangers to see the family exiting their individual rides and all congregating together. Mom and Dad, Josh 16, Judy 14, Jeni 13, Brenda 8, Bonnie 7, Dallas Jr 5, Daniel 3, and Audry 4 months. We were quite the unruly tribe for sure. Even though Dad was actually a stepdad to we 4 older kids, I never felt like I had half sisters and brothers. They were just siblings. So, we got about 80 miles out of Portland, Oregon, and the International broke down on I-84. We had to leave it on the side of the road. We drove on in to Portland to, I think, a cousin of Dad’s. We spent the night there and Dad and his cousin got up the next morning and went to fix the truck. My memories are a bit blurry at this point as far as chronological order of events go. I know we hooked up with another one of Dad’s cousins and also, Aunt Mary Davenport and our long, lost cousins we had not seen in years. It was great getting to see my blood kin and we all instantly got along famously. I don’t remember exactly how, but we ended up in a small duplex on a hazelnut farm east of Portland. I think it had 2 bedrooms. I remember sleeping on a sofa. It was very cramped quarters for a big family. All the younger siblings were in one bedroom. I think. Damn, my old memory! Let’s see…We moved from Iowa in September. I think we were in the month of December or January by now. I felt like I was in a blur. So much had happened so quickly. I had to start school without Jeni. She got lucky and got a case of impetigo on her chin. It took about a week for it to go away. The middle school in Sandy, Oregon was now the 3^rd school I had been to in my 8^th grade year. We had only gone to school a few weeks in Seely Lake, Montana. I[J1]  remember during the time in Sandy that I was really in love with CCR. Their music took me away from all the hubbub of moving here and there. I also loved The Beatles and The 5^th Dimension. “Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon.” I would always answer silently, “Yes.” Life had been a whirlwind for months now and it didn’t feel like there was any end to it soon. There were neighbors in the other duplex. I remember a girl lived there a couple years younger than Jeni and I, name of Sherry. She was an odd little waif. Very thin and frail, lackluster straight, dull blonde hair, and extremely religious. We used to all get together and run through the hazelnut trees. Sherry was very anti-rock and roll. She thought it was devil music. Jeni and I loved rock music, of course. The reason I mention Sherry is because I remember one incident with her that still cracks me up when I think about it. We were at Sherry’s home and we were all singing songs. Sherry didn’t like Jeni and I to sing rock songs so most the time, we didn’t, however, this day, we decided to shake things up. When it was our turn to sing, we broke into The Ballad of John and Yoko. Sherry started hopping up and down with her hands covering her ears, yelling to the top of her lungs, “THAT’S THE DEVILS MUSIC, IT’S EVIL, STOP SINGING, WE’RE ALL GOING TO HELL!” She told Jeni and I to leave when we wouldn’t stop singing so we did. We didn’t live long at the duplex. Mom and Dad found a house further east on Cherryville Drive, going towards Mt. Hood. I told you about this house in a previous installment. I had hoped to stay there forever, but it wasn’t in the cards. By August of that year, 1970, we would be moving to The Barn.

The Barn, Installments 10 and 11.

More rat stories.

You’re probably thinking, “How many rat stories could there be?” This could be the last one. Maybe it isn’t. To quote Cleavon Little’s character, Sheriff Bart, in Blazing Saddles, “Always like to keep my audience riveted!”

Immediately after we moved into the barn, certain members of my extended family started visiting. My cousin, Deana Davenport, was one of them. She is the daughter of David and Mary Davenport, my uncle and aunt. David was my mom’s older brother. We were very close to our Davenport cousins for most of our lives. There was an almost ten-year period between 1961 and 1970 that we saw them sporadically because of all the moving from state to state we did. When we first got to Portland, we became reacquainted with Doug, Beth, Deana, Mike, and Marty. I have a lot of cousins but these particular 5 were the ones I grew to have close relationships with. While living on Cherryville Drive, we visited back and forth between our home and theirs. They lived close to 148^th and Division, right beside a huge restaurant and nightclub called The Flower Drum. I remember Beth coming to spend the night at our place and bringing along romance magazines and reading them to me and Jeni. I had never seen or heard such stories in my life. I was raised on Mad Magazine and Marvel and DC comics. Mom also bought us a set of Classics Illustrated books that were condensed novels plus some added cartoon artwork. Mom also kept a lot of decent reading material in the home. I used to read the Poe stories over and over again. They were my favorites. If I had to give someone credit for introducing me to sex education, it would have to be my cousin, Beth. She seemed to know all sorts of things about sex that I had no clue about!  I guess that makes sense because she was raised in the city and I was definitely a young girl who was raised in rural areas. I wasn’t ignorant to the human body nor what it took to make a baby, but I was clueless, until Beth read me a few stories out of a romance magazine, about men and women delighting in the joining together of their body parts and how much pleasure it could be. I remember those romance stories were pretty steamy and they used the words “penis” and “vagina” generously. Anyway, a close bond was established between my cousins and me and it carried on after we moved to the barn, which at that time, was about 3 hours away from Portland.

Rats!

Before the barn was as finished as it was going to get, Deana came to spend the weekend with us. Our parents made quite a few trips back and forth to Portland and the barn to keep us all in contact with one another. When one is young, the nice things parents do for you isn’t always appreciated. But looking back at those times, I’m really thankful that Mom and Uncle David made so many trips so that Jeni and I could spend time with our cousins. It sure made life a lot better. And it helped us bond with our blood kin. Deana was spending the weekend at the barn. Since we only had the two bunk beds and Mom’s bed, it was decided that Deana would sleep with Jeni in the bunk bed and I got to make a bed on the floor right beside the bunk bed. I think I was making up to Jeni for the long trip across the country with Mom is why I gave up my spot in the bed. I could afford to be generous now. We weren’t quick to go to sleep because we were young women who had things to talk over and giggle about. We still had rats about, but not quite so many. However, they still made noise and you could occasionally hear them scurrying around. I was a bit unnerved about being on the floor and having no protection against a rat invasion except pulling the blankets in around me really tight. But, as usual, I had this inner calm I could call upon, imagine the worst scenario, and tell myself that would never happen. In this case, the worst scenario is that a pack of rats would carry me off to their rat kingdom, put me on a spit, and roast me for a rat celebration of some kind. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. So, me, Jeni, and Deana were in the dark under our blankets, gabbing. I wasn’t all tucked in yet, arms were still out from under the blankets. All of a sudden, Deana said, “What was that?”  I answered, very calmly, “A rat just crawled over my hand.” That was our cue to pull the blankets in tight and try to go to sleep. And we did. To be perfectly honest, I don’t have those nerves of steel anymore. If that were to happen today, I would probably jump up on a chair, start screaming and crying, and totally lose it. Naw, I would grab my baseball bat and try to kill the sucker by beating him to death. The strength that children and old ladies have is incredible.

Broccoli and the Train

Mom and Dad built a really nice kitchen in the loft (2^nd floor) and it was situated in the back of the barn. This was while we were living in the Rat Motel. Before I go any farther, I have to digress a bit. Mom liked lots of light and air. There were no windows in the barn when we first moved in, just the swinging doors on the front of the loft floor. Mom was getting tired of it being so dark in the back part of the loft and wanted a window. One day, Mom took the chainsaw and cut out a big rectangular hole. This was shortly after we moved in. Voila! Light and air!  Plenty of fresh air, bugs, dust! It didn’t matter that we had no window to fill in the hole. Ma finally had light and air! Until we got a real window, at night we had to hang blankets over the hole to keep the cold out. At some point, Mom and Dad acquired a window and it was before winter set in, thank the stars!  Anyway, Dad had the kitchen cabinets made in town, we had a hung ceiling, a new sink, range, refrigerator, and lots of counter space. It was really nice. The kitchen was right below me and Jeni’s bedroom. I think the floors of the kitchen remained whatever the barn wood was. We may have put in linoleum. To be honest, I don’t remember. Deana was visiting one weekend after the new kitchen and upstairs bedrooms had been built. When it was time for bed, Jeni, Deana, and I all scrunched into the full-size bed upstairs. It was a cotton tick mattress, actually quite comfortable, on a one-piece bedframe and springs that folded out. I remember so many fun times giggling, singing rock and roll songs, and gossiping before going to sleep in that bed that was up high in the room on the third floor. And doing homework. Once in a while I got to be alone in that bedroom to do homework and all I could think about was the Beach Boys song, In My Room. “There’s a place where I can go and tell my secrets to. In my room. In my room.” Anyway…Behind the barn about 30 feet were the railroad tracks. You see, we had a train come by twice a day, in the early afternoon and at 2 a.m. in the morning. We had grown used to feeling like we were living through a 7-point magnitude earthquake twice a day, but that night, Deana had no clue it was coming. Around 2 a.m., here comes the train a rumbling and roaring up the tracks, headed east, sounding like a tornado and shaking the shit out of the barn. Deana woke up and was so scared that she vomited her dinner all over the floor. Sheesh, what a delicate doily. It woke the whole house up. I went downstairs and told Mom what happened. We were standing in the kitchen and while we were talking, this bright green gooey flow of vomit started oozing out between the hung ceiling tiles and landed on the kitchen floor, accumulating into what I can only describe as Slimer from Ghost Busters. See, the floor wasn’t finished in the upstairs bedrooms and had cracks in it. And, part of the dinner from the night before was broccoli. It was pretty gross. So, not only did we have a mess to clean up on the bedroom floor, we had to take down some of the ceiling tiles in order to clean up the whole mess. I couldn’t understand how something so innocuous as a train going by, sounding loud and shaking the barn from one end to the other, could cause someone to puke. Some of us have nerves of steel and some don’t.

Installment 12

Thank you to all who are reading my barn stories. I stopped posting them on Facebook because it's easier to log in here and type out the story than to type into a word document, copy, and paste on FB. Plus, I am determined to continue recording the years I had association with the barn and beyond. Once I finish the barn collection, I plan on going backward in time and finally writing about my earliest memories and catching up to the year 1970. It's not as daunting a task as it has felt in the past. I feel compelled to get this history down since Mom died. Years go by so fast and before we know it, we are old, our fingers don't work, we're eating pablum and shitting and pissing in Depends and someone we used to take care of has to take care of us. Plus, our memories fade with each passing year and I figure, if I'm lucky, I have about 20 or so years left in me, so I better get busy and finish this for my posterity. I'm hoping for a book and movie deal at some point, but if that doesn't happen, at least my descendants will have a family history recorded.

 I completed installments 10 and 11 today and feel like I have enough energy to add one shorter story for today. At 64, I still have pretty good keyboarding skills, so that helps. Let's see...what shall we talk about? When school started in the fall of 1970, I was a freshman. We had no tub, no bathroom, and no way to do laundry except take it to Toledo to the laundromat. At that time, the laundromat Mom used was one that was on what we called Front Street. It was in one of the buildings below main street. There was so much to do after we got moved across the river that the laundry didn't get done for the first couple of weeks we were settling into our new environment. One day, Mom decided that she was going to take Jeni and me to town and drop us off at the laundromat for a couple hours so we could do the laundry. It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. There were 8 people living out at the barn, wearing clothes and getting them dirty. That's a lot of dirty laundry that would even give Tide a run for its money. We didn't have laundry baskets so Mom had Jeni and me load up all the clothing into 2 queen size sheets, tie them up by the corners, load them into the boat, and off we went to the Toledo laundromat. If you have never loaded up 2 queen size sheets with dirty clothing and dragged them across a yard, to a gangplank, down the gangplank, to a dock, and heaved the bags into a boat, took the boat across a river, dragged the 2 queen sheets full of laundry out of the boat onto a dock, up another gangplank, across a road to a car, loaded it into the car, and got dropped off in town at the laundromat with the 2 queen sheets full of laundry...DON'T EVER DO IT! It was one of those grit your teeth and bear it experiences. There was nothing fun about it. When Jeni and I got the laundry into the laundromat, there was one woman there doing her laundry. I don't remember how many washers there were in the laundromat, but we used every one of them. I was mortified as I untied the sheets and started sorting laundry and putting it into the washers. The woman who was in the place was amazed at the amount of laundry we had to do. She actually helped us because I'm sure she felt sorry for these two young women who surely had the reddest faces and broken spirits she had ever seen. After we got the laundry loaded, money into the slots and washers started, we started putting in soap. The machines were front loaders and had a soap dispenser on the window of the door where soap was added. We got a little heavy handed with the soap in one washer and as it started the wash cycle, the suds got so thick that they started running out of the soap dispenser and onto the floor. As if the whole experience wasn't bad enough, this had to happen. We tried to block the bubbles from coming out of the washer, but it didn't work. So, we ran for a mop and bucket and had a hell of a time getting the mess mopped up. The lone woman in the laundry stayed in her corner and let Jeni and I take care of the mess. I guess her compassion only went so far. Once the bubbles stopped, it was just a matter of waiting and that was the best part of the whole experience. Several people came in wanting to do their laundry, but there wasn't a washing machine to be had. The clothes finished washing and rinsing, we got them all dried without too much humiliation, and then set in to folding TWO QUEEN SIZE SHEETS FULL OF LAUNDRY! Just about the time Mom got back, we were just finishing up. The lone lady of the laundry had been gone long ago. It had been about 3 hours since Mom dropped us off and we two girls were exhausted from work and embarrassment. I was never so glad to get back to the barn and pack all that laundry back across the river, up the gangplank, and into the house. School started in about a week or so and I had clean clothes for a couple of weeks. I was thankful for that, at least.

I think I would rather have had a rat crawl over my hand.

Installment 13

 It doesn’t take long to establish family routine once the home is settled into. One of the things I remember doing as a family was gathering around Mom in the evenings while she read letters we received from my brother, Jesse, while he was in Vietnam. He enlisted in the army when we still lived on Cherryville Drive. I remember him coming home for a leave before being shipped out. He had done boot camp at a fort in California, the name of it slips my mind presently. I do remember the name of his drill sergeant. It was Leopard and Jesse said he was the meanest SOB he had ever met. When Jesse was done with boot camp, he got to come home for a leave. I was really anxious to see my oldest brother. It had been a long time and I had missed him, even though all he ever did was tease all of us until we wanted to kill him. The day we went to pick him up at the airport in Portland, we got in an accident. There was a sharp right-hand corner on Cherryville Drive going towards the highway and as we were rounding it, a vehicle coming the other way was in our lane and he crashed head-on into us. We were lucky that no one was hurt seriously. I remember Brenda was crying and had a split lip. She was only 8 years old. I don’t recall what happened after the accident except that someone went to get Jesse and the rest of us went home. We were all waiting for him and so glad to see him when he arrived. He looked so grown up in his uniform, not at all like the 17-year-old brother we had left in Missouri. He walked into the living room, looked at Josh, and, as he took his hat off, said, “Never join the army. Look what they do to you.” He had no hair on his head. Not one. I couldn’t get over how different Jesse looked. He looked like a grown man, not an 18-year-old kid. He got to stay a few days, then had to go and, as I record this event, I can’t help choking up thinking that within a very short period of time, he was going to be in a horrible place that would change his life forever. And it did. I knew what Vietnam was. It was in the news all the time on television, in magazines, and newspapers. I knew that it was a place of killing, horror, torture, disease, starvation, and many other things I didn't want to think about. But now I had to because my brother was going to be right in the middle of it. I didn’t want him to go, but he wanted to serve his country because he was a patriot. I don’t think he knew the shit storm he was getting himself into. So, while he was gone, we moved to the barn. I wrote to him and a friend of his faithfully and always looked forward to his letters. I got personal letters from him and he would also send letters addressed to the whole family. We also got a cassette tape now and then with his voice on it. We would gather around Mom in the dining room as she read the family letters to us or played the cassette tape. I remember one particular evening; Mom was playing a tape. Jesse was saying something to each one of us. When it came time for him to speak to Jeni and me, he said that he hoped we didn’t believe what Mom taught us about staying virgins before marriage, that that was old fashioned thinking and wasn’t relevant anymore. All the color drained from Mom’s face and she looked very hurt. I’m sure she wished later on that she had listened to the tape first and that’s probably what she did in the future. Later on, that night, she talked to Jeni and I and asked us what we thought about what he said. I told her that I wanted to stay a virgin and had no desire to have sex with anyone at that time. I don’t recall what Jeni said. When Jesse finally got home from Vietnam, he had changed so much. It had only been a little over a year, but he had aged far more than that. He slept on the floor with a loaded rifle beside him at the bottom of the stairs that went to the third floor. My cousin, Beth, was spending the weekend and it was early in the morning. I was already up but moving quietly around the kitchen and bathroom. Beth started down the stairs and it woke Jesse up suddenly. He grabbed the rifle and pointed it at Beth and she stopped in her tracks. I said, “Jesse, it’s okay. It’s Beth.” He didn’t respond and his glazed over eyes kept staring at Beth intently, never wavering. Beth said, softly, “Jesse, it’s me, Bethy, your cousin.” The light of recognition and reality were suddenly there in his eyes and he put the rifle down. He looked visibly shaken and so was Beth and I. That was one of the scariest experiences I have ever been through in my life. And definitely the scariest thing that ever happened at The Barn. Even scarier than a rat crawling over my hand.

Installment 14

One of my most amazing memories of living on the Yaquina River is the beautiful, warm, end of summer day I got to see, up close, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, and Michael Sarrazin. It was 1970 and they were filming the movie, “Sometimes a Great Notion.” Everyone in Lincoln County was excited that a Hollywood movie was being filmed locally. School had already started and that particular day, the tide was so low that the dock was laying on the tide mud and half the boat was also. Let me digress a bit. After moving into the barn, we quickly established a routine for going back and forth across the river. Mom and whomever needed to go to town took the boat across the river, tied it up at the roadside dock, went into town for supplies, then came home. As I mentioned earlier, I quickly learned how to run the boat motor and navigate the boat back and forth from dock to dock. I became expert at running up to the dock very quickly, powering down the motor, and swinging the back end of the boat into the dock just right in order to jump out of the boat, grab the rope, and tie her up. When we went to school in the morning, if Mom had no business in town, Me, Jeni, Brenda, Bonnie, and Dallas would load up into the boat and head for the road before the bus got there, me doing the navigation. Jeni and I would help the little ones into the boat, I would get the motor started (there was a crank on the top of the motor, like a lawn mower) and Jeni would untie the boat and push off from the dock. At some point, the rope broke and pulled out of the motor. Dad took the motor cover off to fix it, but never did and from that point on, we had to wrap the rope around the flywheel to start the motor. It was a pain in the ass, but you do what you have to. Anyway, on this particular morning when the tide was so low, I had to push the boat off the tide mud before we could get across the river. It was stuck pretty good and wouldn’t budge. This was 1970 and girls still had to wear dresses to school, no pants allowed, so you can imagine what a pain in the ass this whole scenario was for me, bending over and trying to push a big boat full of people off the mud. As if wearing a dress wasn’t bad enough, it was the age of mini-skirts! Try to bend over and not show your ass in one of those!  Impossible! I thought a moment and told the kids I would be right back. I’m sure they thought they were going to get to stay home from school. Wrong. I went up the gangplank and got a rake, came back down to the dock with it, and wedged it tightly onto the nose of the boat, hoping this would help give me some leverage in getting the boat into the water. The unthinkable happened. The rake slipped and me with it. I ended up to my knees in tide mud! My shoes, my clothes, my skin all covered in the dark, slimy muck. I was instantly angry. I grabbed the front of the boat and, with Herculean strength, started rocking the boat off the tide mud. I had HAD IT! I got the boat into the water. Mom had come down to the dock at this point and was giving orders but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t listening. I never blamed Mom for the hard life that we lived but at this particular moment, it was all her fault I was stuck in a bunch of tide mud in bumfuck Egypt. Now I had to get myself out of the tide mud. I held onto the front of the boat with both hands and pulled one leg at a time out of the mud. It wasn’t an easy task. There was suction going on and the tide mud didn’t want to let go of me. But I finally got both legs out of the mud, crawled up on the nose of the boat, and discovered that I only had one shoe. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I yelled at Mom, “I ONLY HAVE ONE SHOE AND I’M FILTHY!” Mom calmly said, “I’ll take the boat across the river, you go clean up.” She spoke exactly the right words to me. I went up to the house, shed my dirty clothes and one shoe, and cleaned up as best as I could. I only had the one pair of good shoes for school and a ratty pair of tennis shoes I used for PE. I put on some shorts, a top, and the tennis shoes. When Mom got back, she told me that she heard they were filming up in Elk City and we would go up there later. She was trying to make me feel better about the whole situation. I actually cheered up a bit. The tide had turned and was coming in by the time we left and the boat was floating peacefully on the water. I was feeling better at this point, calmed down, and actually glad I got to stay home because Mom and I never got to spend any quality time together. We crossed the river, got in the car, and had a nice drive up to Elk City. When we got there, filming people were everywhere. We got out and started walking around, seeing what people were doing. There was a tall, older man with a cast on his arm walking around and I bumped into him. I said “Excuse me” and walked on. Mom said, “Judy, do you know who that was?” I said, “No, who?” She said, “You just bumped into Henry Fonda.” I said, “Really?” I turned around to look at the man and all I saw was his back. I wasn’t about to catch up to him and make a spectacle of myself, so I let it go, but was satisfied in the knowledge that I had bumped into him. Later on, after we went home, a tugboat with a big boom of logs was coming up the river. It was a warm day, so I went down to the dock and sat on top of one of the pilings to watch the show. There was a man in a small aluminum boat navigating around the log boom. He eventually got out, tied the boat up to a log, and started walking all over the log boom. He wasn’t but a few feet out from the dock when I realized it was Paul Newman. I looked at the tugboat and there was Michael Sarrazin. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was! What started out as a shitstorm of a day turned out to be my lucky day. They kept pushing the logs up the river and I guess somebody must have been filming somewhere. I stayed on the dock watching what they were doing for what seems like hours. I got to have a special experience that day that I have never forgotten it, all because of the frickin minus tide! As I sit here reminiscing about that experience, I can almost feel the warm air and sunshine on my skin. If I ever get dementia, at least I can take comfort that this memory will be one of the last to go.

Installment 15

I grew up in a family full of loggers, musicians, and mechanics. There were always 2 or 3 cars and a couple of motorcycles hanging around ye olde homestead, aka, The Barn. Mom was always too busy to participate in taking turns riding the cycles or doing anything else that was fun because, well, she was Mom. She had too much to do to take care of her large family and farm. Once in a while we could talk Mom into taking part in the fun. When we lived in Blanchard, we had a pogo stick. We older kids used to have pogo stick contests to see who could get the most bounces. We always bugged Mom and wanted her to take a turn but she turned us down each time. Until one day...we were all taking turns pogo sticking in the dining room. Once again, we wanted Mom to try. Mom finally gave in and hopped onto the pogo stick and started bouncing. There was a stairway entry in the dining room where we were pogo sticking. It was the type of stairway where there were 2 or 3 steps that went up, then a sharp right turn and the rest of the stairs. The door to the stairway entry was usually closed, but it happened to be open at this particular time. Mom was bouncing right in front of the stairs, lost her balance, fell, and hit her tailbone. I felt so bad seeing Mom hurt. She got up, was wincing in pain, walked into the living room and sat down. She got over the initial shock and pain but I’m sure falling on those stairs didn’t help the eventual back problems she had. Falling did something else we would know about for a few months. It dislodged the IUD she had in her uterus and she didn’t know it. Several months later, we found out she was going to have baby number 9. That’s what happens when you’re having fun with your children. I told you this story to lay a foundation for another barn story. Shortly after we got moved across the river, we were all outdoors having fun, taking turns riding a mini-bike we had. We had a huge field of river frontage property to ride and run around on. It really was a great place for children to spread their wings and feel free. Again, we wanted Mom to participate with us and take a turn riding the bike. She decided she would hop on and take a spin. Mom was such a good sport to join in the fun we were all having. Unfortunately, lady luck was against her once again. She got the brake and accelerator mixed up and ran herself into an old, broken down barbed wire fence in the field. It cut her up pretty good. She had gouges and blood all over her arms and hands and some on her legs. We all ran to her to see if she was alright and she was angrier than hurt. At least this time we didn’t have to worry about an IUD getting dislodged. Dad had got a vasectomy after Audry was born, thank God! The doctor that delivered Audry told Dad that Mom should not have any more children, she was done, finished, KAPUT! He didn’t leave Dad much of a choice. It was the right thing to do. The next year, Mom ended up in a very bad way. Because of all the hard work she had done her whole life, and the falls she took, including out at the barn, she ended up with slipped discs in her back. I was a sophomore in high school when she ended up hurting herself so bad, she was confined to bed. In my whole life, I have never seen Mom in such a bad way. Her back hurt her so bad, she was crying out and shedding tears because of the pain. I get tears in my eyes just thinking about my mother lying in bed in excruciating pain, not able to do anything. I think this was probably my first caregiving job. Mom was not able to get up to use the bathroom upstairs. She couldn’t walk up the stairs, period. So, she was in a bed downstairs. Eventually the living room downstairs became a bedroom. Anyway, Mom told me to bring her a bread pan when she had to go to the bathroom. So, I did and I helped get it underneath her. It was a horrible experience not because of the waste or emptying it. It was all Mom could do to get herself raised up enough to use the bread pan as a bedpan. She cried out in pain and had tears streaming down her face. I was almost in tears myself, see her that way. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know why Dad wasn’t taking her to the hospital. There was no way an ambulance could get to her. I guess we could have called the Coast Guard but honestly, we didn’t think about it at the time. Dad finally tried to help Mom get down to the boat, but halfway down the gangplank, she was crying out in pain, so he took her back up to the barn. FYI, for the reader, it is very difficult reliving this memory because on the 20^th of this month, it will be a year since Mom passed away and I was in attendance through the whole process and just the thought of Mom being in pain hurts my heart. Dad decided he would have to take Mom over the mountain if she couldn’t get to the boat. We had a Land Rover at the time. He took a piece of plywood and secured it to the space in the back of the vehicle, laid down a mattress, and then slowly and carefully loaded Mom into the Land Rover. It hurt her like crazy, but that was our only other option. She cried like a baby getting put in the vehicle and I didn’t even want to imagine what going over the 3 bumpy mountain switchbacks and all the way to town on a gravel road was going to do to her. Dad took someone with him to help with Mom. I don’t remember who. I know I stayed home to take care of the family. I have never been so scared or worried about Mom any other time in her life than I was then. Dad came home sometime the next day and told me that Mom did okay going over the hill and that she had been transported to Salem Hospital and was under the care of a back specialist, a Dr. White. I can’t believe I remember his name. Mom had three bulging disks and had to have back surgery to take out the discs and fuse the vertebrae together. She was in traction for a week, and from what I was told, on good, pain relieving drugs. That set my mind at ease somewhat. I don’t recall how long Mom was gone, but it seemed like months when it was probably 2 or 3 weeks. I didn’t get to see her during that time. We went on with life as usual until she returned home. Mom probably got to make some phone calls to us while she was gone but I honestly don’t recall. I was consumed with housework, cooking, cleaning, caring for children, but then, even when Mom was around, that was what I did every day. It was different without Mom there. The home felt like it had lost its heart. I can still imagine that feeling all these years later. When Mom finally got home, I was so happy. The last time I had seen her she was hurting to the extreme and crying out like a wounded animal. She looked better than I had seen her look in a long time and she had lost quite a bit of weight. She told me all about what happened to her and what the doctors and nurses were like and, of course, there was a Nurse Ratchet attending her that she ended up butting heads with. I knew Ratchet had met her match in Mom. Unfortunately, Mom came home with a Percodan addiction and a prescription for more. They weren’t as careful with those types of drugs in 1971. She was able to kick it, like she kicked a lot of other things. Mom wasn’t predisposed to addiction to anything but her black coffee and an occasional cigarette when she was bartending. So, things got back to normal when Mom got home. At least, as normal as they could living off the grid on The Yaquina River.

Installment 16

As one can probably imagine, starting high school while living in a barn wasn’t easy.  We didn’t have bathing or laundry facilities. We did have fresh spring water, thank god. The was a natural spring that ran down the canyon between two mountains. This is where we got our water. There was a small tile up at the head of the spring and Dad ran a pvc pipe from there to the barn so we could have water. It was gravity fed and when we did finally get a real bathroom put in, we had excellent water pressure. It wasn’t so bad crossing the river in a dress or skirt when school first started and the weather was still warm. I actually enjoyed the crisp fall mornings on the river. There was always either a light mist hanging just above the water or there were ropes of fog that lay right on top of the river that were beautiful and cast a magical reflection. The sunrise coming up over the mountains to the east was always spectacular, shining it’s beams down upon the Yaquina. However, the boat we had when we first moved into the barn had no top on it. So, when the weather got nasty, we had to cross the river with no protection other than our coats and by the time we got on the bus, we were soaked. We took a lot of teasing from kids on the bus and at school because of the way we lived. After it started raining and the temperatures dropped, Mom finally told Jeni and I to wear blue jeans to school, take our dresses, skirts, etc., with us, and change after we arrived. So that’s what we did. Boy, did we get the looks and comments when we got on the bus the first morning. “Pants aren’t allowed at school!” “We know, we’re going to change when we get there.” I must have said that 20 times before the end of the first day we wore pants to school. I remember students coming up to Jeni and I at the end of the day while we were waiting to get on the bus, asking us who we were and telling us, “Pants aren’t allowed.” (Yes, we know. Shut the fuck up.) I wanted to say that so many times, but I didn’t. Once word got out that we were the family that lived in a barn out on the Elk City Road, we really started getting the teasing. I seriously believe that the teasing wouldn’t have been so bad if one of the teachers had not took part in the harassment. See, after the bad weather started, there were some mornings that we could not get to school because the river was blown out from all the rain and it was dangerous to cross. So, this particular teacher, Mr. H, decided to dub Jeni and I “The High-Water Girls.” He would call us that in front of the whole class and make fun of us for missing so much school. It was humiliating and I actually hated this man for treating us unkindly and I wanted to do bad things to him. I finally had enough one day and when I got home from school, I told Mom what he had been doing to us. I told her I wanted to take a sanitary napkin, put catsup all over it, and leave it on his desk with a threatening note. Mom told me, no, Judy. If you do something like that, it will make you like him. So, I didn’t. But Mom went to the school the next day and talked to Mr. Rose about what had been going on. I really liked Mr. Rose. He was a nice man and was very understanding about our situation. He told Mom he would take care of the situation. Soon after the meeting with Mr. Rose, Mr. H apologized to Jeni and I in front of the whole class and he never said another unkind word to us again. He did, in a roundabout way, accuse me of cheating on a test one day. Mr. H had changed the seating chart and put me beside one of the popular girls. I was behind in my homework, but I studied my ass off to pass the test, and I got an A. I can still remember him saying, “Isn’t it ironic that you got an A after I changed the seating chart.” I knew what he meant and I stared him down as I said, “I studied hard to get that A.”  It’s kind of ironic that, later on when my sons were in middle school, I had a falling out with Mr. Rose, who was a teacher now. One of my sons was in his class, being obnoxious and rowdy, and when I went to have a meeting with him and the principal, Mr. Rose said, right in front of me and my son, “He’s a lost cause, a loser. I’ve seen kids like him. They grow up to become losers and contribute nothing to the community they live in. We shouldn’t waste our time on him.” I guess he was burned out on being in school. I heard he was close to retirement and he probably was biding his time until he was done. But that didn’t prevent me from telling him if he felt that way, he shouldn’t be teaching school. But, that’s another story. The next summer after my freshman year, Mr. Rose started taking his sailboat up the river and docked at our place a few times. He was always welcomed with a glass of lemonade by Mom and he loved it out there. We always enjoyed seeing him sail by. 

One of the detriments of living in the barn and having our vehicles parked across the river on the roadside was that the gas got stolen out of the cars on a regular basis. After starting school, in a few weeks, Jeni and I did make a couple of friends and we also had relatives that went to Toledo High. TT was one of them. His mom was my mom’s cousin so I guess we were 2^nd cousins. Anyway, I can’t remember how, but one day Jeni and I were invited down to the smoke hole at the bottom of the driveway from the high school. All the “cool” kids were there, smoking up a storm on lunch break. TT was there, along with DW, and a bunch of other students who thought smoking was cool. It was a nice way to socialize and get to know a few people, even if smoking made me dizzy and sick. Jeni and I got a cig from someone, lit up, and we started talking to TT and DW. TT didn’t know where we lived, but he knew we were related. He and DW started asking us questions about where we lived and how long we had been there. When we told them, we had moved to Toledo in August and lived across the Yaquina River, both of their faces went white and they looked at each other like they had seen a ghost. I asked them, “What wrong?” They both went from white to beet red and said, “You guys live out there in that big, white barn across the river?” We said, “Yes, that’s us.” DW looked at TT and one of them, I don’t remember who, said, “Damn. We have to tell you something. We are the ones who have been stealing gas out of your cars! We took it so we could have gas to go to parties on South Track.” Wherever that was…They were really upset and I could tell they were really sorry for what they had done. In fact, one of them said, “If we had known that was you guys, we wouldn’t have taken the gas.” They asked Jeni and I to apologize to Mom and to tell her they would pay back what they owed. I don’t know if they did, but it doesn’t matter now. There were less gas thefts after that because I think TT and DW told others to leave the vehicles on the Yaquina River alone. That’s what happens when you live in a small community. You can’t get away with anything.

Installment 17

When Jesse got home from Vietnam, he let me have one of his Army shirts. I cut the sleeves out of it and used to wear it around the farm. I was not a very big person at the time. Five foot, 2 and ¾, 110 pounds. Mom said when I was much younger, she and others called me Skinny Malink, but I don’t remember ever being called that. Jesse’s Army shirt was very big on me and he was an average size man, 5’9, about 150 pounds. After I cut the sleeves out of the shirt, the fabric frayed and the armholes were so big that they showed my bra. I loved wearing that shirt with the name Logan on the pocket. I wanted to wear it to school, but Mom wouldn’t let me. So, every chance I got, when the weather was warm, I wore it over a pair of cutoff Levi 501 blue jeans. I remember one day I wanted a picture taken of me wearing that shirt. So, I put the shirt and shorts on and strapped a fully loaded ammunition belt across my chest (Jesse had brought it home from Vietnam), then bummed a cigarette off someone, I don't remember who. I think it may have been Jesse. I may have been holding a rifle, too. Me, Jesse, and my younger siblings went out into the pasture to take the picture. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I lit the cig, knelt down, gathered my younger siblings around me on both sides, and had a picture taken. I have a very vivid memory of this picture in my mind and wish I could recreate it because the picture has been long gone for years. But I remember clearly me and my siblings were a sight to behold, me in that Army shirt I loved, ammunition belt across my chest, a lit cigarette hanging out of my mouth, and surrounded by my kids. I felt badass and I looked badass in that shirt and I loved feeling that way. I wish that picture would show up somewhere. In regard to that beloved Army shirt, I used to love taking the boat across the river at full speed, wind blowing in my hair and through the armholes of that shirt. I felt free, like I could take off and fly at any moment. I felt like a superhero when I was in that Army shirt with the cutoff sleeves and my last name on the pocket. One day, during the summer of 71, we heard a car coming around the corner from town, horn honking, alerting us to the fact that we had company. I was outdoors, in my Army shirt, doing something, probably weeding Mom’s garden or riding around the pasture on the old Farmall Cub tractor. Maybe I was sitting on the dock with my legs in the water. Anyway, the vehicle was a small white Chevy Citation, no one we knew. Mom told me to take the boat and go across the river and see who it was. So, I untied the boat, hopped in, started the engine, gave it full throttle, and started up the river to the roadside dock, wind blowing my hair around wildly, me feeling every bit like a badass teenage Army shirt superhero. As I got closer to the dock, I noticed there were two young men in white dress shirts, suits and ties, with name tags on the pockets. Oh, boy! Mormon Missionaries. I came into the dock as fast as I dared, nose first, powered down the motor, swung the ass end up to the dock quickly, jumped out rope in hand, and watched in amusement as the waves I created rolled up under the dock, almost causing the missionaries to lose their balance. I swear, that Army shirt gave me super powers! I wasn’t even embarrassed that my bra was showing. They introduced themselves as Elder James and Elder Hall. I said “Hi, I’m Judy. How did you know to honk coming around the bend?” Elder James said the bishop had told them. They went on to tell me that they were sent out by the bishopric to see how our family was doing. We were Mormon, but inactive in the church. Anyone that is Mormon or familiar with the faith knows that the church is very good at keeping track of their members and are genuinely interested in checking on families and helping where they can. So, I told the missionaries to hop in the boat and I would take them across the river to meet the family. They looked at the boat, at me, and at each other uncomfortably and Elder James, the lead honcho, said, “We aren’t allowed to go onto water while on our mission. You live over there?” I replied, “Yes, our home is down the river where that big white barn is. The only way you can visit our home is by getting in this boat.” James wasn’t keen on breaking the rules, but he quickly made a command decision that if that was the only way to get to a member’s home, then it would be okay. While I held the boat up close to the dock, they both awkwardly got in. I untied the rope, threw it into the boat as I hopped in, told them to sit down and hold on. I started the motor, clicked it into gear, and gave it full throttle, making a 180 turn in the water, bringing the boat up on one side for a few moments. I kept it on full throttle all the way over to the dock, killed the motor at the last minute, swung the front out and the back end in, and hopped out, rope in hand, grabbed the boat and pulled it in snug and parallel to the dock. The missionaries didn’t look too worse for the wear. I said, “Hop out." We went up the gangplank and Mom was standing outdoors, along with all the rest of the siblings. Introductions were made and I can honestly say that was the start of a beautiful friendship between my family and those two, wonderful elders. They became regular Saturday visitors, came out in their street clothes, and helped with chores, building, wood cutting and stacking, gardening, you name it, they were there to help. I fell in love with Elder James almost immediately. Not heart fluttering love, just this simpatico type of affection I had felt for Bill in Wyoming. I was almost 16 and he and I hit it off immediately. If he had not had a fiance’ in Arizona, I may well have kept in touch with him after he left. Elder James soon started acting like he had to compete with me. I could do everything. Run a chainsaw, chop wood and stack it, run the tractor, build things, navigate the boat, use a shovel to dig holes, cook, you name it, I could do it. Thanks to Mom. I wasn’t the type of female to defer to a man just to make him feel better and it used to irk the heck out of Elder James that I could do anything he could do. No, I could do more than he could even think of doing. He was a city boy, soft and sheltered. And I let him know it. One day, Mom had him and I build a bridge across the creek that ran down through the orchard. It was just across the railroad tracks, right behind the barn. She told me what lumber to use, gave me a bag of 16 penny nails, I grabbed the chainsaw and a couple of hammers, and off we went to build the bridge. Elder James wanted to run the chainsaw and I asked him, “Have you ever used a chainsaw?” He said yes, but he couldn’t get it started, so I showed him how. He cut up the boards into the lengths we needed. We dug holes for the posts, got them in place, then started the frame that we would nail the planks to. That elder could not drive a nail into a plank to save his soul. Every nail he hit the nail, he bent it. He wasn’t holding his hammer right. I tried to show him how to hold the hammer, but he didn’t listen, of course. He was the man. Sheesh. So, I kept nailing planks, having no problems, and he was getting more and more frustrated by the second. He hit his thumb several times and cried out. He finally got so frustrated; he swore. I said, “Elder James! That’s not a good example of being a missionary of the church!” He gave me a sour, unapologetic look. He was angry and about that time, Mom came out with some lemonade. He looked a bit sheepish when Mom showed up. I think she heard him swear and I had the feeling he was thinking the same thing. Mom commanded, simply by her very being, a certain amount of respect. Missionaries cursing within earshot of Lois would not bode well for the missionary. She didn’t say anything to him as she offered him a cold drink. I told her, behind a veiled grin, he was having trouble with nails bending. He threw me a dirty look. Well, as dirty as a soft, citified missionary could muster up. Mom had a way of getting anyone, including stubborn men, to do what she wanted. She said, “Let me see that hammer, Elder James.” She took the hammer, looked at it, and said, “Judy, you gave him the worst hammer we have. Let him use yours.” I handed him my hammer and took his. Mom said, “You shouldn’t have any problems with that hammer. It’s newer and has better balance. Try it and make sure you hold your hammer at the end, not up by the hammer head.” He took the end of the hammer in his hand, grabbed a nail, lined it up, and hit it with the newer hammer and, Voila! The nail didn’t bend! I knew what Mom did. She psyched him out. And got him to hold the hammer correctly, something I wasn’t able to convince him to do. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. He didn’t have any problems with driving nails after that. We got the bridge finished about an hour later and it looked really good. Elder James was proud of himself. I let him bask in the glory. He earned it. After the missionaries were transferred, every time I walked across that bridge, I was reminded of Elder James, Nail Bender. The elders ate dinner with us quite often after a hard day’s work. One night, we were having venison from a deer Dad poached off the mountain. Yes, we hunted deer out of season. Big deal. It was pretty easy to get a deer most of the time. That back-picture window I told you about opened and quite often, in the early mornings, deer would be standing right behind the barn on the railroad tracks, just waiting to be on our table. We had a big family, limited income, and it seemed like beef was increasing in price almost weekly. If it weren’t for the venison, we would have been eating beans, rice, and potatoes much of the time. Anyway, we all dished up our plates and commenced to eating a delicious dinner of chicken fried venison steaks, mashed potatoes, venison pan drippings gravy (sooo good), a vegetable and homemade bread and butter. After a few bites of the venison, Elder James asked, “What kind of meat is this?  It’s really good.” I told him it was side hill salmon, our code name for deer meat. He replied, “This is fish?” We all laughed and Mom said, “No, it’s deer meat, venison.” He got the funniest look on his face and said, “I’ve never had venison. It’s really good. Why do you call it side hill salmon?” I explained to him that it was killed out of season, you know, illegally ill-gotten gains. I’m sure this put him under some sort of pressure in regard to his code of ethics but he didn’t seem too worried about eating poached venison. Eventually, Elder James and Elder Hall were transferred from our area. There is a separate story there that I will relate later. Elder James, quite coincidentally, ended up in Portland and met Aunt Mary and Uncle David and our cousins. Talk about a small world!

Installment 18

1970 is a very long time ago. I have a pretty good memory for things that happened, but sometimes, I get the chronological order screwed up. Probably some of the facts, too. I don’t figure at this point in my life that it’s critical to remember things in order. So, as new memories come to the surface of my consciousness, I jot them down so I can tell the story later. We moved to The Barn on August 18. It wasn’t a picnic moving off the grid, across a river, into a barn, and learning a whole new way to live and commute daily. And all that within a few weeks of my freshman year in high school starting. I know my stories about the barn, up to this point, have been told in a light hearted manner. But the god’s honest truth is, I was really upset when we moved to the 40-acre farm. There was nothing light hearted or fun about our situation. Where we once had a working toilet, we had none. Where we once had a bathtub and shower, we had none. Where we once had running water, our own bedrooms, a nice kitchen, living room, washer and dryer, mirrors, electricity, heat, all the things that normal people had, we now had none of those things. Where once there were no rats the size of a beaver, there was a colony of them. I was not a “happy camper.” Mom’s parenting style was, “I’m the boss, do as I say, don’t question me, and things will be fine.” She knew Jeni and I were not happy with our new living situation. I guess Mom knew she couldn’t order us to be happy, so she did things every once in a while, to try and lift our spirits. She was a good singer, had always sung to us from the time I can remember. With us 4 older children, we always got a song, a story, and a prayer with Mom before bed when we were growing up. I think as the family got larger, and her responsibilities increased, she abandoned this habit. But I always remember Mom singing around the house and it was lovely most of the time because Mom had a fantastic, powerful, beautiful voice. I must digress for a few sentences in order to finish this line of thinking.

I don’t recall when we finally got a huge paned glass window in the front of the loft floor of the barn where the swinging doors were. But I know it was a welcome addition to all the other improvements going on day by day. It let so much light into the huge loft area and made everything feel warm and welcoming. I spent many hours sitting in front of that window, gazing out on the river and the surrounding area. It was truly beautiful, the mountains, tall, evergreen trees, wildlife, and the train. Being on the floor in front of that window became a habit. We eventually got burnt orange shag carpet in the huge living room area which made it all the more inviting. In the winter, a favorite spot to be was on the carpet between the wood stove and the window. I spent many hours laying on the floor in front of that window, reading, doing homework, or just being lazy when I could get away with it. I was often reminded of the Mama’s and the Papa’s song, “Look Through My Window” after the window was installed. “And the rain beats on my roof. And it does not ask for proof…Look through my window to the street below. See the people hurrying by.” Except, in this case, it was river below and current hurrying by.

Getting ready to go to school every morning was hard. I had to get up at 5 a.m. to get myself ready before getting the younger kids up to help them get ready for school. Okay, I didn’t have to get up that early. I chose to. I wanted to have an hour or so to myself to get ready with no interruptions. After the bathroom walls were built and the tub installed, we still didn’t have running hot water. We only had cold. Mom had a big blue canner that we used to boil water for baths, dishes, whatever we happened to need hot water for. We filled the canner up at night with water, put it on a burner on low, and let it sit that way until morning. I would get up, pour the canner full of hot water in the tub, fill it up again and bring it to a boil and pour kettle number 2 into the tub, fill it up one more time, leave it on the stove to get hot for later, go into the bathroom, mix the hot water in the tub with cold water until it was warm, and take a bath and wash my hair if needed. By the time I was finished getting clean, dressed, and hair combed out, it was time to wake up the rest of the hoard. The younger siblings weren’t very cooperative when it came to getting ready for school. I could exert a certain amount of authority as the oldest sister, but I could only go so far. Mom wouldn’t get up until she heard me say, “Brenda, get dressed! We’re going to miss the bus!” or something similar. Then Mom would roll out of bed and offer her particular brand of encouragement to get the kids motivated to get ready for school. In other words, “Get yourselves ready for school or I’m going to knock you up to a peak and knock the peak off!” Mom would make breakfast and after everyone was dressed and fed, we all gathered our things together, coats, books, and headed downstairs and out to the dock. It was miserable going across the river in the wintertime. There was nothing fun about it. It was cold, wet, rain coming down, sometimes so foggy I couldn’t see a foot in front of me, a boat motor that didn’t always start on the first pull, kids that didn’t want to go to school, and water in the bottom of the boat with no top. I was in a foul mood from the time we started to the dock until we got on the bus. Sometimes, I was in a bad mood until I got to school. Because the younger kids were always dragging their feet, occasionally we got a late start and the bus would sit there waiting for us to get to the dock, get out, tie up the boat, get up the gangplank, and onto the bus. It was embarrassing and kids made fun of us, but it didn’t happen every day, thank god. Always a ray of sunshine if you look for it…right? Mom knew how miserable we were. She had to have known. But she didn’t sympathize or try to offer any words of comfort. Instead, one day, she decided, while we were riding across the river getting drenched from the rain, that it would be a good idea to open a window and belt out the song, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” I’m sure her voice carrying across the river sounded beautiful, but all it did was make me angrier and more annoyed than I already was. I was thinking, “Ya, Mom, it’s a beautiful morning for you. You get to stand there in the window singing while we’re getting rained on and bailing water out of this damn boat!” Mom singing that song became a habit in the mornings as we made our way across the river in inclement weather. Jeni and I would look at each other with “I wish she would knock it off!” expressions on our faces. One morning, we were about half way across to the dock and Mom was singing away while we suffered in silence. I had had enough. I turned my head around and yelled, “SHUT UP!” I know Mom heard me, even above the noise of the boat motor, and I instantly regretted what I said. I fretted some during the school day about what was going to happen to me when I got home later, but all my worrying was for nothing. Mom didn’t say anything and I wondered if she actually heard me yell at her. I had only yelled at her like that once before when she and Dad left Jeni and I to baby sit one night in the Rat Hell House while they went to visit friends in Elk City and play music. I was sick of staying home with children and never got to go anywhere, and was so pissed off that as they were crossing the river, I yelled, “FUCK YOU!” from the porch of Rat Central. They came home the next day and the first thing Mom said when she came through the door was, “I heard what you yelled last night, Judy.” I was still pissed off and not ashamed one bit for what I had done. Mom grabbed a switch and was going to give me a few licks across my ass and I told her, “I’m 15 now, you aren’t going to touch me with that switch.” The time had finally come. It was a mother/daughter showdown between Lois and Judy. Mom tried to grab my arm and swing me around so she could switch me, but I jerked away from her, grabbed the switch, and broke it over my knee. Mom said, “I can get another switch.” I said, “Go ahead, I’ll break it, too.” She was livid that I was finally defying her. She grabbed the broom and tried to hit me with it. I took hold of it and Mom and I got into a scuffle for a few seconds, fighting over the broom. I finally got it away from her and broke it over my knee and said, “Mom, you are not going to hit me. You can make me do chores or ground me, but you aren’t going to hit me.” She got this funny look on her face for a few seconds, then walked into the kitchen. Just like that, I had asserted myself and Mom and I had a new understanding from that point on.  Maybe that’s why she didn’t say anything to me when I yelled at her to shut up while she was singing. At any rate, I never did anything like that again. Of course, I had confrontations and differences of opinions with Mom in the future. But I never yelled at her again like I had previously.

Installment 19

About a year after we moved onto the farm, Mom decided to make what she called home made balloon wine. I had never known Mom to do this previously to our move to the barn. Back then, juices were sold in half gallon and gallon glass bottles with the small neck on top. Mom had a good supply of these glass jugs for her wine making. When she could afford it, mom would buy frozen juices to make her wine. Her concord grape wine was the best, in my opinion. When she couldn’t afford to buy juice from the store, she would use the blackberries out of the freezer or fresh picked blackberries. When she had no juice or berries, she used Kool-Aid. Sometimes, she would mix natural juice and Kool-Aid together to make the juice go farther. She even picked mint leaves one year and made mint wine and jelly. Both were deliciously delightful on the tongue. I loved Mom’s mint jelly. It was clear with a green tint to it. Spread it on a warm slice of her homemade bread and real butter and you felt like there was nothing better in the world. She used food coloring to make the mint jelly look prettier in the jars. Anyway, back to the wine. Years later when wine coolers were invented, I told Mom, “You invented wine coolers a long time ago when you used to make your Kool-Aid wine.” That's what the KA wine tasted like, wine coolers. When Mom made wine, she didn’t just make a gallon or two. She made 10 gallons so she could share it with others. She had 3 different types of wine she would make. Dry, medium, and sweet. She had a recipe for something she called a cordial, but I don’t remember it.  Mom was a very creative person when it came to cooking and wine making. She had to be. She had a big family she had to feed us all on a very low budget. She had to make a pound of ground beef feed 9 or more people and a half gallon of juice make 4 gallons of wine. That’s where the Kool-Aid came in handy. Mom wanted to make wine, so she figured out another way if she didn't have real fruit juice. We had plum trees in the orchard behind the barn and in the west side yard. She made plum wine a few times and everyone who tasted it liked it. Mom’s basic recipe was to prepare a gallon of juice for the wine. She would put a certain amount of sugar in the bottom of the gallon jug. The amount of sugar determined whether the wine was meant to be dry, medium, or sweet. She would add a ¼ teaspoon of yeast to the sugar, then pour the juice into the jug. She would put the cap on the jug, tip it upside down a couple times, then secure a balloon to the top with a good amount of tape. She used the biggest, thickest balloons she could find for the top. Then she would set the jug in the pantry downstairs because it was dark and cool. Every once in a while, she would check the balloons to make sure they didn't have holes in them and she would give the wine a flip upside down. The scent of the wine brewing was heady and a treat in itself. And it was fun to watch the balloons get bigger and bigger. 

In about six weeks, as soon as the balloons deflated, Voila! There was homemade wine that would knock your socks off! I loved the whole process of wine making and I loved helping Mom make wine. I wasn’t particularly fond of wine, but when I wanted a little kick to my day or weekend, a half a glass of Mom’s brew was just the ticket. I told you this story to tell you another one. In my junior year, I was dating Steve Wheeler. Many of you who know me know him. He eventually became my husband and father to our 3 sons. He had a group of guys he hung around with and they all rode motorcycles. On the weekends, they would ride over the mountains from Toledo out to the farm. It was an awesome sound to hear 5 or 6 motorcycles riding over that mountain. We could hear them coming a half hour before they got there. The usual cohorts were Steve Wheeler, Clem Carkhuff, bless his soul and may he rest in peace, Gary McAward, Jack Goin, and a couple others I can’t recall. Mom loved it when the guys would show up. She would have homemade bread and cookies and usually lemonade. We had hamburgers and hotdogs, chips, potato salad, and it was always a great day when the guys would ride out to visit us. My little brothers and sisters loved having a bunch of older kids around to play with and talk to. I remember the riders would get there early in the morning when the sun hadn’t been up too long and the fog was still lifting off the river. I can still smell the clean, fresh air mixed with the scent of Castrol engine oil and tide mud. I can hear the current of the river in the background and the water lapping at the riverbank. Birds were singing and all seemed well with the world on those weekend mornings. The guys would take a short break, drink some lemonade and have a few cookies, then leave to ride to Elk City and beyond. I think my favorite part of the whole experience was the roar of the motorcycles heading over the mountain to the barn and then up the mountain to leave and the smoke trail they left behind. One particular weekend, Steve, Clem, and Gary rode out and had permission from Mom to camp out on the mountain above the old house. I think they camped on the first landing at the end of the first switchback. They brought food, Boonesfarm Strawberry Hill wine, and probably some MD 20/20 with them and we had a good supply of Mom’s wine. They hung out with the family for most of the day. Mom let us drink a little bit of her wine. I asked her why she let us drink wine when it was illegal. She said she would rather me and my friends were home under her watchful eye if we wanted to drink. Mom was always clean and sober. I only remember her being tipsy twice in my lifetime and she was funny! Anyway, she by no means encouraged us to drink and her homemade wine was off limits unless we were offered some by her. So, it got dark and the guys took off to their campsite. If memory serves me correctly, after they got to their campsite, Clem went overboard on the Boonesfarm wine and pretty soon, he and Steve came riding down the mountain. Clem was totally shitfaced and sick as a dog. He went to the bathroom and started throwing up. How he ever rode his bike down the mountain without wrecking it, I’ll never know. So, I tended Clem for a while and Steve hung out at the house for the duration. Clem finally fell asleep on the floor, and I’m not kidding, hugging the great porcelain god. Steve wanted me to ride Clem’s bike back up the hill to the campsite. I can’t remember what kind of bike it was. I knew how to ride a cycle but it was dark and I had never ridden a bike up that mountain in the daytime. I resisted the idea at first but Steve gave me a quick lesson, I hopped on the bike, it had a headlight, thank god, and off we went. The thing about being young with no responsibilities and no children, is that you take chances and do things you wouldn’t normally do. The ride up the mountain in the dark was probably one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. I made it up to the campsite just fine and Steve gave me a ride back down to the barn. The next morning, when poor Clem got up, he was so hungover that he was white as a sheet and looked like someone had pulled him through a knothole backwards. He had bloodshot eyes and disheveled clothing and looked really ill. I don’t recall exactly how Clem got back up the mountain, but when he did, Gary Coward was waiting for him with a Strawberry Hill sandwich. He had taken some of the wine and poured it on one of the sandwiches they had packed and when Clem showed up, Gary started waiving it in his face, asking him if he wanted a Strawberry Hill sandwich. Clem was not amused, in fact, was madder than hell, and charged Gary like a mean old bull. Clem ended up going home and telling his parents that he had the flu. If I remember right, Clem reacted the same way to Copenhagen the first time he tried it. It was during school and I think Steve let him have a dip and Clem ended up swallowing it and got sicker than a dog. Clem was a big guy, big broad shoulders, sort of a Charles Atlas physique. He had an affable personality, was a bit on the slow side, but was funny as hell to be around, so he was easy to take advantage of. You didn’t want to piss him off, though, because if he got a hold of you, it wasn’t pretty. He definitely, at that time and place, didn’t have the stomach for drinking, Copenhagen, or Strawberry Hill sandwiches. In the summer before my senior year, Mom and Dad took the younger siblings and moved to Missouri and left Jeni and I with 13 gallons of homemade wine…

All in good time, my readers, all in good time.

Installment 20

One other time Mom’s homemade wine was involved was when my best friend, Ramona Dryer, Steve, and a guy named Kim Wynn (I think) were spending the night at the barn. Picture this: The Barn on TheYaquina River, summer, the year was 1972. Straight across the river from us was a large pasture, the Elk City Road, and then McMillan’s place up on the hill. Grandpa and Grandma McMillan lived there with their 3 grandchildren, Carol, David, and John. I think their dad, Don, was in the coast guard and he came home occasionally and eventually, came home for good. They had a little dog named Zigzag who used to jump into the river after sticks that people would throw. He was really entertaining to watch. The McMillans had a couple of horses in the pasture and maybe some cows. This is one of those things I don’t remember exactly because it’s been 50 years ago. The only reason I remember the horses is because I got thrown off of one of them. Twice. It was a light-colored gelding that was ornery and needed a seasoned rider. Why Carol put me, a green horn, on that horse is beyond me. The second time he threw me of was the end of my desire to learn to ride a horse. Anyway, Kim Wynn was a foster child of the McMillans. He was a tall, broad shouldered, sandy haired guy who was nice, friendly, and easy to get along with. Kim, the McMillans, and Jeni, me, and the younger kids all rode the bus together. Getting back to the stay over. Kim, Ramona, Steve, Jeni, and I got to drink some of Mom’s wine. We all got a bit tipsy, but the wine had a whole different effect on Kim than it did on the rest of us. I guess he had no tolerance for alcohol. And, if memory serves, he drank a lot more than the rest of us. Kim first decided that he was going to go jump into the river and go swimming. It was after dark, the current was always dangerous even in the daytime, and we all had a helluva time keeping him from jumping in. The next thing he wanted to do is hop the train as it went by. The minute he heard it, he was outdoors, running towards the tracks, saying he was going to hop the train. Now, the train didn’t go too fast as it went by the farm, but it went fast enough that no one, even in the daytime, should be trying to catch a ride. Again, we all had to distract Kim and hold him back to keep him from trying to hop on the train. He was very determined. We finally tried to get him to eat something and drink some coffee because the wine to him was like giving firewater to a native American. It wasn’t a good scenario. Instead of getting a nice buzz off the wine, it wound him up, like he was on a stimulant of some kind. He finally fell asleep in a corner and we put a blanket on him. He was embarrassed the next morning, as he should have been. He survived, learned a lesson about Mom's wine, and went on with life.  The summer before Jeni and I were juniors, Mom and Dad took all the younger siblings and moved to Missouri. They left us alone at the farm. There was a big generator up in the old house that Dad taught me how to prime and use so we would have light because the electricity was turned off. I knew how to work it before he showed me. I had started it many times when our electricity got turned off because the bill didn’t get paid. I also knew how to walk along the spring, checking the pipe and the tile at the head of the spring in case the water quit running. My aunt and uncle and their family were supposed to move in within the month before school started, so Jeni and I would not be alone more than a few weeks. I was almost 17 and Jeni was almost 16. I didn’t have any anxiety about being by myself with Jeni until my aunt and uncle got there. I was very responsible and had already lived a fairly hard life and gotten through it. We had groceries and a little bit of money until the relatives showed up. The one thing I didn’t have was a car. But life was good anyway. I had a nice, healthy body and strong legs that could take me where I wanted to go. Before dark the day the family all left for Missouri, I went up to the old house to start the generator. I primed it, flipped the on switch, then pushed the button to start it like I always had. It made a sound like a car engine turning over a couple of times, then stopped. I tried doing the trouble shooting steps Dad showed me in case it didn't start and, again, and nothing. And Again. And Nothing. Great. Our first night at the barn by ourselves was in complete darkness. We had some candles and a flashlight and made do with the basics. It wasn't exactly living like pioneers, but it felt damn close to it. Jeni and I went to bed early and, to be honest, we were both a bit unnerved about being in the barn with no power. Because we were nervous, we heard every little sound. The next morning, I told Jeni, “Let’s walk into town and see Steve and you can see Tom.” Jeni was dating Tom Browning at the time. We didn’t have anything else to do and couldn’t even play records on the record player. So, we got cleaned up and dressed, ate a little something, and were ready to trek into town. With no one there but us, there were no messes to clean up. That was a plus. But the house sure was empty without Mom, Dad, and our younger siblings. I didn't think about it at the time, but now, as I write this, I wonder how they felt leaving Jeni and I behind? Enough digressing. I figured it would be a couple hour walk from the barn to Toledo. I think it was 5 or 6 miles. Before we left, I downed a glass of Mom’s wine. You know, one for the road. I didn’t figure it would have too much of an effect on me while I was walking. Boy was I wrong. After crossing the river in the boat and getting on the road, pumping my legs and arms, it wasn’t half an hour before I was toasted. It was a beautiful summer day and, as I recall, it wasn’t so bad walking a long distance while inebriated on Mom’s secret sauce. I thought the buzz would wear off before we got to town, but it didn’t. That wine had a real kick to it. We walked all the way to Dale and Jack’s Gas for Less. That’s where Steve worked. I walked up to Steve while he was waiting on a customer, threw my arms around his neck (and that totally isn’t me), and he pushed me off of him and said, “You’re drunk. Go sit down in the office.” So, Jeni and I went into the office. We waited there while Steve worked. He was not happy with me showing up at his workplace shitfaced on the vino. I don’t blame him. So, I ended up going to his Mom and Dad’s for dinner that night and Jeni ended up at Tom’s place for dinner. When Steve’s mom and dad found out Jeni and I were staying out at the barn by ourselves, they were not happy. They insisted that I stay there on their sofa until my aunt and uncle moved to the barn. I said okay and was thankful because by that time, the wine had worn off and I was tired and feeling droopy. I figured Jeni would stay at Tom’s home, but it didn’t happen because Mrs. Browing was a teacher at Toledo high and she thought it inappropriate for Jeni to stay at their home. After dinner they took her home to the barn and she had to spend the night there all by herself. The next day, I found out that she wasn’t at Tom’s place, so Steve and I drove out to the barn in his red Ford Ranchero (I loved that car) and there she was, in tears, all by herself. I felt absolutely horrible that she had been there all night long by herself. So, Ray and Hilda Wheeler invited her to stay in their home as well. We were sure glad when Aunt Mickey and Uncle Bill Davenport showed up at the barn. It wasn’t that Jeni and I weren’t grateful for the Wheeler’s hospitality, but we wanted to be in our own home, our own room, in our own bed. When my aunt and uncle arrived, there was no water running in the house and no electricity. I filled Uncle Bill in about what was what…

But that’s a new chapter and I’m not quite ready to move that far forward, yet.

Installment 21

I’m going to backtrack and tell you a story about my younger brothers, Dallas and Dan. Dallas is 9 years younger than me and Daniel is 11 years younger. I took care of both of them when they were born. I fed, bathed, diapered, rocked, played with, and loved them as if they were my own babies. As they grew up, it was obvious that Daniel, like Brenda had been, was turning into a little shit and Dallas was the more level headed one of the two of them. Daniel was spoiled and demanded attention constantly and Dallas could go off on his own and entertain himself for hours. Daniel had Mom’s ear all the time and it soon became obvious that Mom favored Daniel over the rest of us simply because he wouldn’t have it any other way. And, Mom would give in to his demands rather than give him a good whacking and make him behave. Dan could harass Mom into doing anything he wanted her to do. Daniel was a golden child when he was a baby. He had gorgeous blonde curls all over his head that Mom would not cut and as the years passed, the curls hung down to his shoulders. He was a very beautiful child. Dallas was also a very beautiful baby with beautiful red hair and a strawberry birthmark on his head. But for some reason, being blonde at that time was better than being a redhaired, freckle faced human being. Dan learned to talk early and used to entertain the adults with his tall tales. It was cute when he was little, but as he grew older, it was just damned annoying. I suppose all the attention he got for his ability to hold crowds of adult’s captive didn’t help him mature and grow up. Dan was Scut Farcus from “A Christmas Story.” He was ornery and told lies on all the rest of us just to get his own way. And Mom believed his lies most of the time. There were many instances we all got disciplined severely because of him, but Dallas took a lot more punishment due to Daniels dishonesty and attention seeking. Brenda was also a hellion when she was younger because she was spoiled rotten by Dad, but as she grew up, she grew out of her selfish, self-centered ways and became a very loving, caring human being. Daniel didn’t. To this day, Daniel still monopolizes conversations. He has to be the center of the universe when he is in a room. It’s a habit with him and he is too old to be any other way. Don’t misunderstand, I love Daniel with all my heart. I’m just telling you the facts that relate to this installment and help the reader to understand why Dallas Jr. did what he did.

One day, when Dallas was 12 or 13, he had had enough of Daniel. I had already left home and was married with 2 sons and one on the way. Daniel would not leave Dallas alone and when Dallas told him to keep his hands off his things, Dan ran to Mom and told her that Dallas had hit him or threatened to hit him with an axe or a brick or some damn tall tale that Mom would believe. That’s exactly what happened this particular day. So, Dallas did something amazing that, to this day, I still have trouble accepting in the logical part of my brain. The mountain right behind the barn had a stand of trees on it. Right in the middle of the trees was a much larger seed tree that we named Old Grizzly. It was straight up the mountain from The Barn. Old Grizzly is still there on that mountain. That’s how I can tell where the barn was when I take a drive out that way. It’s hard to see the tree now because all the other trees are grown up around it. But I can still see the top of that grand old tree. Anyway, Old Grizzly was about 60 feet tall when we moved to the barn. Dallas, in his frustration against Dan, strapped a piece of plywood to his back, took a hammer and nails with him, and climbed Old Grizzly almost to the top and nailed the plywood to some branches. He finally had a place where Daniel couldn’t get to him. I don’t recall how long he stayed up there, but I had a conversation with Dallas recently and we talked about Old Grizzly. He said the view of the river and the mountains from up there was spectacular. I think Dallas should get some kind of medal for being able to, at the age of 12 or 13, climb a tree that tall to the top, with a piece of plywood on his back, and live to tell about it. That’s something I’ve never heard about someone doing on any reality television show.

Installment 22

After I was out of high school and was 8 months pregnant, that would have been in June of 74, I went out to the barn to visit the family. It wasn’t easy being big and pregnant and trying to waddle down the gangplank and get into a boat, then do the same thing in reverse when I got to the other side of the river. But I had been through worse than that and, although I had left home and was starting my own life, I missed my family and the farm so I visited often. When I got to the barn, I went upstairs and found my brother, Daniel, with a face on him that I didn’t even recognize. He was only 7 years old at the time and I turned to Mom and said, “What happened to him?” I was in tears instantly because his face was all bruised and swollen, so much that he was unrecognizable. He was grinning through the swelling. Mom told me he had taken the bike up the mountain behind the barn, when he was told not to, and he crashed it on the way down the mountain.  If memory serves, the brakes went out on the bike. I was so angry and upset I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t stop crying because I was so worried about him and angry that he took the bike when he wasn’t supposed to. And, I was pregnant and extra sensitive, I suppose, although I was not aware of that aspect of it at the time. One thing that made me upset was that Mom didn’t take him to the hospital because of no health insurance, I guess. Plus, Mom was from that generation of people who, if you could nurse yourself back to good health without a doctor, you did. I remember Mom telling me a story about her birth. She was born in 1933 into severely poor circumstances. Mom’s story is that she was almost born into the Yaquina River. Her folks were living on an old house boat at the time and Grandma Jean felt like she needed to have a bowel movement. Instead, she was in labor. So, Mom was born and was so small, I think she must have been a preemie from the description. Mom said half of her body was shriveled up due to Grandma being malnourished and she was so small, she fit in one of grandpa’s hands and they used a shoe box for a cradle. She was born into very poor circumstances. I’ll write more about that later. When Mom was around 3 or 4 years old, she and Uncle David, her brother, were playing outdoors. She said they were playing a game where Mom would lay her hand on a chopping block and UD (Uncle David) would take a swing at her hand with an axe and she would move her hand before he hit it. Except one time, she didn’t move in time and her four fingers got chopped so bad, they were hanging by a thread. Mom told me Grandma Jean didn’t take her to the hospital. Instead, she cleaned the wounds, aligned each one of her fingers as straight as she could, then wrapped each finger in bandages and immobilized the fingers with one final bandage. After a few weeks, grandma took the bandages off and Mom’s fingers, except for being slightly twisted one direction, healed perfectly. How, I do not know. Mom had no nerve damage, could play the guitar and piano very well later on in life, and used her hands to cook and bake delicious meals for years and years. She never had a problem flying the bird at someone who she thought deserved it, either. I guess the fingers chopped by an axe occurrence from Mom’s history is why Daniel’s swollen, bruised face wasn’t of enough concern for her to take him to the hospital. When I think about all the years we all spent at the barn, and not one person died from a terrible accident, like drowning in the river, falling out of a tree, getting hit by the train, getting rabies from a rabid rat, burning up in a fire, or crashing a cycle coming down the mountain, I can only come to the conclusion that we all had guardian angels around us constantly, protecting us.

Installment 23

The third winter we lived at the barn, my cousin, Beth, lived with us. It would have been the winter of 72-73. It got really cold that winter, so cold, it froze the Yaquina River. The freezing didn’t happen all at once because of the tide going in and out. The water was never completely still with no current except for a few seconds each time the tide was all the way in or out and during the changing of directions. If you sat and watched the tide river at high or low tide, you could see the currents change from going one direction to a still pond state for a couple of minutes, then swirling 360-degree circles, and finally the current going the same way. Sometimes at high tide, a weird phenomenon occurred in which the current was going two different directions on each side of the river. Beth, Jeni, and I were at the barn by ourselves the first night the river froze. It was really cold inside the barn, and we were out of firewood. Mom and Dad had taken the younger kids and went somewhere so we three were on our own. We went outdoors to scrounge around for something to burn in the stove, even if it was nothing more than a few twigs. We were so cold that we could hardly stand it. We had not been outdoors too long when we heard a loud noise like thousands of windows breaking all at once. It scared the three of us so bad that we stopped dead in our tracks, looked at one another, and all screamed in unison! We ran back into the house and wondered what the terrible sound was. We soon realized that the river had frozen when the tide changed and all the ice started breaking up and made the crashing noise. I remembered Mom told me that her dad, Grandpa Dick, had told her that when he was a kid in the early 1900’s, the river had frozen over so hard and for so long that people could drive a team of horses and a wagon across it. I remembered that story the night of the crashing ice and it caused me to feel some sort of tenuous thread stretching back in time, connecting me to my grandpa even though many years had passed since his birth and death. Anyway, we girls didn’t want to try to find wood anymore after the scare. So, we all got into bed together and got under a bunch of blankets to keep warm. We stayed rattled until we all went to sleep. Speaking of the river freezing, of the things I loved so much about living on the river was watching the tide come in and go out. The river was constantly changing. Every 6 hours, the river was high or low and at different levels in between the peaks and the lows. Many times, when we were out of gas or the boat motor wasn’t working, we depended on the tide to help us get across the river. There were more than a few times we had to paddle the boat across the river and I can testify that trying to paddle against an outgoing tide was not an easy task. In fact, it was near impossible to paddle up the river when the tide was on the way out. The current was too strong. It was stronger than the incoming tide because the river flowed to the Pacific Ocean. At the time I lived out on the farm, I learned so much about so many different things but while learning, I didn’t realize I was cataloging anything important in my mind because I was just living life. I could mechanic a boat motor to make it start. I learned to navigate a boat like a pro and thoroughly enjoyed it. I learned about the tides, whirlpools, undertows, and how the moon affected the tides which in turn affected fishing and how dangerous it could be to get caught up in an outgoing tide when we were swimming. Knowing these things helped me in my decision making later on. Anyway, getting back to the cold, freezing weather, each time the tide came in, at the end of the tide cycle, it would freeze. Then when the tide was completely out, it would freeze at the end of the outgoing cycle. This caused the water to freeze in layers. It didn’t take long before there were huge sheets of ice floating up and down the river. And each time the tide changed, the water and existing ice froze again and again. The sheets of ice became thicker and thicker. The ice layers finally became so thick that it was one solid sheet from one side of the river to the other. When the tide went out, there was nothing but huge blocks of ice laying along the banks and out into the middle of the river and the water was moving underneath. The boat and the dock became frozen in layers of ice. It was surreal to see ice everywhere. One of mom’s poor, helpless ducks even got frozen in the ice. I remember seeing it from the window on the second floor. I grabbed my coat and hat, got a hammer and ran down to river. In about 5 minutes, I had the duck broken free from the ice. I remember seeing the poor little animal’s webbed feet paddling beneath the ice, which was about 2 or 3 inches thick. I started pummeling the ice with the hammer and had him free in about 5 minutes. There was still ice stuck to her body so Mom said to bring her in the house and fill the tub with cool water and let the duck thaw out that way. I remember missing a week of school because of the cold, arctic feeling weather. Steve couldn’t get out to visit and he and I were stuck using the phone to communicate. It was early in our dating years, so we really missed one another. You know, young love and all that rot. At the end of the week it started freezing the river, on Saturday, Steve drove out and was going to make his way across the river one way or the other. He went to McMillans and got John and the two of them walked across the pasture to the edge of the river. McMillans had an aluminum boat laying there on the river bank. John and Steve had an axe. They went to the edge of the river and started chopping ice and when they had a hole big enough, they lowered the aluminum boat into it. They continued across the river, chopping ice a little bit at a time, until they made it all the way to the dock. That’s something you don’t see on a reality tv show, either. It was one of the strangest times we ever had while living at the barn. After things started melting, the river was full of huge masses of ice, anywhere from an inch to a few feet thick. It was quite a while before we could take the boat across the river because it was like navigating hundreds of mini-icebergs. Even when we could get across the river, we were dodging ice for a week or so after.  I don’t recall ever hearing that the Yaquina River has ever frozen since then. I know I have a lot of my mom’s dreamer personality. I have fantasized about buying the barn property and building a facsimile of the barn, only this time it will be finished, insulated, and warm with lots of hot water. I doubt it will ever happen, but ya never know!

Installment 24

In the loft floor of the barn, we had a small wood stove in the front left corner. It was cheaply made with very thin metal. The body of the stove was oval in shape and it was probably about 3 feet tall. It had four curved legs on the narrow ends of the stove. In the front on the bottom was a damper that had a small tab that one used to open and close it. Dad never put chimney caps on top of the stove pipe outdoors so at times, as mentioned earlier, wind blew down the pipe and often filled the barn with smoke. When I reflect on the years we spent in that old, dry barn and think of what a tinderbox it was, I am amazed that the barn didn’t burn down and kill someone. One winter after we installed the small wood stove, we were having really windy, rainy weather. The noise of the rain hitting the corrugated tin roof of the barn was so loud at times that conversation was impossible. But I remember loving that sound when it would happen. The hail hitting the roof was even better. It didn’t happen often so I guess that is why it wasn’t a deafening, horrible experience. When I think back to the experience of listening to the rain or hail hitting the roof, I remember feeling like I was in a cocoon being protected from the elements outdoors. There was only a thin tin roof between us and the inclement weather and it was actually amazing to me that I could be so close to the storm and not be consumed by it. Anyway, one stormy, windy, rainy day, we had a good fire going in the small stove on the loft floor. When you opened up the damper all the way, the fire would get so hot that the side of the stove would turn red. We had the damper all the way open. All of the sudden, a huge gust of wind blew down the pipe. It caused a huge burst of fire about 3 feet long to blow out the damper! It lasted about 5 seconds, then stopped. This blast of fire made the stove look like a fire breathing dragon’s head. It was quite a scary and fascinating experience. The fire blew out a few more times and, if I remember right, we actually captured a picture of the fire breathing dragon stove, but I have no idea what happened to the picture. From that point on, during windy days, we never turned the damper wide open. Although having fire blowing out into the middle of the room was exciting, we had to do the prudent thing and stay safe. Some of my fondest memories of living in the barn involve me standing with my back to the wood stoves, heating myself up. The barn was not insulated, even after Mom and Dad started the renovation. There were 2x4 frames and plywood and paneling put up on many of the inside walls, but never any insulation. Between us and the outside walls of the barn was nothing but a cold air space and the new inside walls. Heating the barn in the winter and keeping the whole place warm was impossible so standing by the wood stoves was a common occurrence. We always had numerous dogs and cats indoors and many times, it was a fight for position to be able to warm oneself beside the stove. The barrel stove downstairs was our favorite place to gather in the winter. It was able to hold a lot of firewood and was a good size stove. A lot more people could fit around it than the smaller stove upstairs. Dad actually ran the water pipe from the water heater through the barrel stove and it worked beautifully to heat water. The only problem was that if we didn't use hot water all the time, the water would get so hot that a valve on top of the water heater would go off and blow steam. We had to keep the hot water faucet trickling while the wood stove was being used so that the water heater wouldn't blow up. I remember a time when I went to use the hot water in the downstairs kitchen that was in the front of the barn. I turned on the faucet and nothing but hot steam shot out. It scared the crap out of me and I hollered, "MOM!" I left the water faucet on and it steamed for about 10 minutes before it turned into nothing but hot water. I was very aware, after that, about making sure that faucet was on. BTW, the hot water heater was in that small kitchen at the end of the white metal kitchen cabinet, just a few feet away from where I was standing. 

 

Installment 25 When Mom and Dad first started the renovation of the barn, the loft space was intended to be our main living space. Dad had ordered some beautiful kitchen cabinets, a nice stainless-steel double sink, a new electric stove and fridge, and a nice dining room table. The living room was huge and had nice shag carpeting and padding. Once everything was as done as it was going to get, we had a very comfortable space to live. However, for some reason, and I can’t remember when it all started, Mom decided she wanted the kitchen downstairs. I think it was probably the second winter after everything was finished upstairs. I came home from school and the whole kitchen upstairs had been moved downstairs in the back-left part of the barn. Mom had acquired a metal white cabinet that had a double sink that she put in a small room in the front left part of the barn. As previously mentioned, the water heater was also there and a washer and dryer. The rest of the kitchen was where the stanchions had been.  If you don't know what stanchions in a barn are, Google it. There were a couple of 4x4 posts that the stanchions were built between. Dad had taken the stanchions out and built a long table and benches out of planks of wood we had rescued from the river. This is one thing I remember doing with Mom quite often during the summertime. There was always some type of scrap wood floating up and down the river as the tide went out and in. Mom would call out, “Judy, get down here to the dock!” If the tide was almost in, the main current ran close and parallel to the dock and the assortment of wood pieces would be in that current. We would pull the wood out of the water and lay it on the dock. If the wood was out in the middle of the river, we would get into the boat and skirt around the wood, grabbing as much as we could and lay it across the bow of the boat, then take it back to the dock and unload it. Mom was able to build quite a few things out of the wood we got from the Yaquina. After the barn was “finished”, Mom took things into her own hands and made changes as she saw fit. She wasn’t the type of woman who consulted her husband about changes she wanted to make to the home. She just did it. Hence, the beautiful kitchen that was on the loft floor showing up downstairs with no warning. I have no idea how Dad felt about coming home occasionally to Mom’s reconstruction work. There was no stopping her. When she got an idea in her head and she wanted to implement it, she just did it. She probably could have been a spokesperson for Nike because nothing stopped the Lois when she wanted to do something. The kitchen being moved downstairs didn’t last long. Within a year, she had moved it back upstairs. This time, however, she used some of the rough wood planks we got from the river as the countertops. I know Mom must have had a vision of how this roughhewn wood would look before she turned it into countertops. The wood was very uneven and not really suited to be used to prepare food on or even set a glass on. But Mom wanted it that way. She used varnish to finish the tops and it helped some to smooth things out, but there were still slivers of wood that could cause a lot of damage to a hand or finger. In my memory, the countertops looked really good, but they weren’t practical. At that time, the early 70’s, Mom used to talk about a table and chairs that she wanted. It was at Pier 1 Imports in Portland. It was made from very dark, medieval looking wood. There were two chairs with arms that looked more like thrones and the rest of the chairs looked the same except without the arms. It was a huge monstrosity and I didn’t particularly care for it, although I was really too young to have an opinion about a family table and chairs. I think that table and chairs Mom wanted is where she got the idea for the rough-hewn countertop. Now the kitchen was back upstairs…but not for long. Again, within a year, it was back downstairs. And Mom did it all by herself. I would go to school in the morning, having made breakfast in the upstairs kitchen and when I got home that afternoon, the whole kitchen was downstairs. Years later, after I was married with a house full of young boys, I reflected on Mom’s obsession with moving the kitchen two and fro. I had developed the habit of rearranging my living room furniture a couple times, or more, a year. I thought about Mom and came to the conclusion that she was depressed because I was depressed when I was going through my furniture moving phase. I’m not sure if Mom was pre-menopausal or just depressed from the rough life she had lived and having 9 children. I know her moving the kitchen all the time was fodder for jokes among we siblings for many years. Even today, if I am talking about old times at the farm with my brothers and sisters, we always have a laugh at Mom’s expense for eating breakfast in one kitchen and dinner in another. I hope Mom won’t hold this against we children as we aren’t being vicious in our memories of her...eccentricities. Most of the time, we actually honor our Mother for her uniqueness, regardless of how it may have affected our lives negatively. Mom was one of those freaks of human nature. She had the wisdom of the world and would share it with anyone who would listen. She just had a hard time applying it to her own life. I suppose these last couple of paragraphs can be my tribute to my mom, being as how it is so close to Mother’s Day. She’s been gone a little over a year but her influence on my life will be felt until I take my last breath. It is my hope that when it is my time to pass from this life to the next, that my mom will be waiting there for me with a switch in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

Installment 26

A couple days ago, Deana had to have oral surgery so I went to transport her back and forth and stay with her a day while she got over the after effects of the loopie drugs. While I was at her place, I told her about the blog I was keeping about the barn and I would like her to read it. This triggered some memories of hers from being out at The Barn. We talked about a time where she traveled from Portland to the barn with my brother, Josh, and his wife, Sue. They were driving “Captain Midnight”, a dark blue or black 1955 Chevy that actually had “Captain Midnight” painted on the side of it. I barely remember the car but I remember the name. Deana remembered that the car had bald tires, which was par for the course with many of the vehicles my family owned in our younger days. Way back then, we were without serious responsibilities, and didn’t give a second thought about going somewhere in a car with bald tires. We just took off and went, no worries, no cares. After all, it was the 70’s. It wasn’t just a time. The 60’s and 70’s were a feeling, a way of life that the older generation didn’t understand. We were part of the rock and roll generation, the protesting for equal rights for minorities, the women’s movement, Vietnam, long hair, bell bottoms, pot, LSD, free love, and most of all, don’t trust anyone over 30. There is no way to explain the feeling of those times. There was a carefree mood that permeated and transcended everything else. The music of the times promoted peace and love, but it also warned the listener about things that would rob them of their soul, mainly greed, unbridled lust, and trusting the wrong people. Sorry to digress, but I feel that adding in my 2 cents worth about that time so long ago was important to the story. So, Josh, Sue, and Deana visited within the first few months we lived at the barn. When they arrived, it was pretty slim pickins as far as groceries went. Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard was bare and we were all pretty hungry. Josh, Sue, and Deana must have made the trip on a wing and a prayer because they were hungry, too. All Mom had to eat was some big crates of tomatoes and a few spices. When Josh, Sue, and Deana arrived, we all started pooling together any change we could find. We looked high and low for pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. By the time we were finished, we had 5 or 6 bucks to spend. In 1970 or 71, that was a lot of money and would go pretty far. Eggs were 70 cents a dozen. A gallon of milk cost about a $1.50. Mom sent Josh, Sue, and Deana to town and told them to get bread, bologna, and probably a gallon of milk. Deana couldn’t remember exactly what all Mom requested, but I’m sure it was something that would feed all of us. At that time, it would have been 11 people, Mom, 8 of her children, Sue, and Deana. Deana remembered that Jeni didn’t get to go to town for the groceries and was angry about it but Deana couldn’t remember why. When they finally got back from Toledo, they had 2 loaves of bread, a small pack of bologna, no milk, and a pack of cigs. Now at the time, Mom forbid Jeni and I to smoke but when we weren’t around her and hanging with Super Superior Man (Josh’s name he gave to himself) Sue, and our cousins, we smoked and on occasion had a little nip of Boonesfarm Strawberry Hill Wine, MD 20/20, or    Beer. I’m sure Mom wasn’t thrilled about the cigarette purchase, but probably made the best of it. Deana recalled that we all had tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches. She didn’t know if it was because of the tomatoes or hunger, but she said those sandwiches tasted really good. Those types of sandwiches weren’t normal fair for her but we had grown up on lettuce and tomato sandwiches. I still love them to this day. So, we lived another day to make more memories in the barn and on the farm. I don’t know about anyone else out there, but as I get older, that one special place that I lived that I wish I could go back to is the barn. I really didn’t like it at first because of the inconvenience of living there. I mean, who moves 8 children into a barn then a house, both overrun by huge rats? But after the barn was renovated and somewhat comfortable, it wasn’t so bad. No, I didn’t get to be in town too often or go to very manyschool dances, football, basketball and baseball games. I didn’t get to try out for track, basketball, or any other sport that I knew I was good at. But I loved being at the farm. There was a gentle, peaceful feeling on that 40 acres that Mom and Dad had purchased. If I allow myself to drift off into deep thoughts about the barn, I can see myself laying in the sun on the dilapidated dock, dipping my feet into the water, feeling the warmth of the sunshine, and listening to the sounds of the country: birds singing, water lapping at the riverbank, in the winter, the creek running down the mountain to make it’s way to the river, and children playing all around, or swimming, laughing and having fun. No, it wasn’t all a picnic, but if I could choose a place to live out the rest of my life, it would be there at The Barn.

Installment 27

I decided that this installment would be a brief characterization of all the different people who were a part of the barn. I’ll start with Mom, since she is the one who probably insisted on buying the place and moving her family into such unique, interesting, CRAZY circumstances. Lois Jean Davenport was born on June 17, 1933 up the Big Elk River, Oregon. If you want to look at the area on a map, Google Elk City, OR. Her birth was never recorded. I have a letter from the Vital Statistics office in Salem attesting to the fact. When Mom moved to Oregon in 2017, we applied for an Oregon resident ID card for her. We were both quite surprised to find out that Mom’s birth had not been recorded. Mom had a driver’s license her whole life, so how in the world she was able to obtain it without her birth being recorded is a mystery to me. There are 2 versions of Mom’s birth. The first story is as follows, from Mom’s lips to these pages: Grandma Jean Davenport was big and pregnant with Mom. The family lived way beyond Elk City going towards Harlan, on the Big Elk River in a houseboat. It was slim pickins as far as material goods and food went, so there was always a lot of poaching going on to help feed the family. One day, Grandma Jean, according to Mom, thought she felt a bowel movement coming on, so she went to the bathroom on the houseboat to relieve herself. The toilet emptied into the river. After sitting down on the toilet, Grandma realized she was in labor and about to give birth. She hollered for Grandpa Dick and he helped her to the bedroom and that is where Mom was born a few hours later. This is the story I remember and enjoy because Mom said Grandma almost gave birth to her in the river. When Mom was born, half of her body was shriveled up due to Grandma being malnourished and she was very tiny, probably a preemie. Mom was so tiny that her bed was a shoebox. Her size also allowed her to fit in Grandpa’s hand, her head at the end of his fingertips and her feet at the butt of his hand. The second story, which I had never heard before, Mom told me while she was living with Glen and I in La Grande, and I believe it is also recorded in some of her papers, was that the family was living in an old railroad station building that was about 5 or 6 miles off highway 20 on the Elk City road. I believe one of Grandpa Dick’s sisters was there when Grandma went into labor. There was a big fuss made and eventually Grandpa got everything under control and Mom was born. The shoebox for a bed and her size and condition were consistent with the first account of her birth. Lois Davenport was the youngest sibling out of 4. From all the accounts I have heard about Mom when she was young, she was a very intelligent, talented child and, eventually, beautiful young woman. Grandpa Dick was very adamant that his children learn to read at a very young age and from everything I have gathered, he had a lot to do with their initial education. They may have been poor but Grandpa wanted them educated and using their minds. The family at that time were farmers and loggers. They were country folk, but definitely not hillbillies. More like renegades, rebels, and rogues. I have heard other people that knew the Davenports call them the biggest bullshitters on the planet. Especially the men. I agree with that sentiment. Mom had a stubborn personality from a very early age. If she wanted something bad enough, by damn, she was going to get it. She was a very pretty young girl and had musical talent that could have led her to a much different life had she been born into a more affluent family. Unfortunately, back then, women in the Davenport family were not encouraged to pursue careers or dreams. They were to grow up, get married, and have babies. Unfortunately, that attitude carried over into my life as well. But that’s another story. Mom told me that she was a carefree child and loved to run around the mountains and valleys whenever time allowed. Her poems and songs reflect this sentiment. Mom was a dreamer and no matter how old she got, she always had a dream of how she wanted her family to live and later, herself. Mom lived a tough life and many times it was because of her own decisions. The family grew up during the depression and surviving was the name of the game every day. I think going to school was probably a relief for Mom. There, she not only got to further her education, which was important to Mom. She also got to participate in plays and choir, activities where she could really showcase her talent. Mom’s personality was shaped and molded by the people and events surrounding her. Mom’s memories of Grandma Jean were of a woman who lay in bed all day with her head under the blankets. When she did get up, she always had a mean, surly attitude and liked to lay into the kids. Uncle David told me the same thing about Grandma. He said he didn’t know why she had kids because she didn’t appear to like any of them except Uncle Bill, the oldest son. Grandpa Dick had emphysema at a very early age and couldn’t do much, so after Bill and Joy got married and left home, Mom and Uncle David were left, at very young ages, with the responsibilities of building fires, chopping wood, feeding animals, cooking, doing laundry which was no easy task, tending a garden, and anything else that was required to live on a daily basis. I remember, before Mom passed, her telling me a story about her and Uncle David going out hunting. They were very young children, Mom not even 10 years old yet. Mom said Uncle David shot the deer and she packed it back to the house on her shoulders. I’m not sure how big the deer was, but Mom was 9 or 10 and it seems almost impossible that she would be strong enough for such a feat, but she swears she did it. And I believe her. When she was older, she used to tell us, “Children are capable of a lot more than adults give them credit for.” Unfortunately, for Mom, she was also a victim of severe sexual abuse by relatives and men who were acquainted with the family. I don’t feel it necessary to go into detail or name names, but suffice it to say that being sexually abused multiple times was probably a big reason why Mom wasn’t able to choose a decent man for a husband. She tried three times. I know Mom was driven by her belief that once you are married, you make it work no matter what, yet, she had 9 children with 2 different husbands and then got married a third time in her 50’s to a man none of us could stand! When I think of my mother as a young girl and the severe sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of men who were blood relatives, it rips my heart to pieces even today. In writing about the barn and, eventually, the whole family history, I have pondered seriously whether or not to include the gory details or name the men who tortured Lois, the little, innocent girl who had no one to be her champion and protect her. I decided that it was integral to the characterization of Mom to include this sad past part of her life. I believe that those who are reading this account will understand and not take offense for what I have written. And if they do, that’s their problem, not mine. Sexual abuse isn’t something that gets swept under the carpet anymore. We’re all adults with past history and should be mature enough to handle the truth. When I think of Mom today, I think of a woman who survived terrible hardships and physical abuse. She didn’t always make the right decisions, but she did the best she could considering the suffering she went through.

The Barn, Installment 28

It took about a year to adjust to life on the Yaquina River, living in a barn that was remodeled into a home. Mom had lofty dreams about how she wanted the barn to eventually look. I think she wanted it to have insulation in the walls, under the first floor, and between us and the tin roof, but it never happened. Despite not having it exactly perfect, the barn was a very comfortable living space and it was large so as to accommodate a big family, plus company, comfortably. Most of our family and friends loved coming to visit. There was only one woman that visited that I remember being, for want of a better word, a snob. She was a prissy bitch and hated the whole experience. She acted like we were filth and should be licking her boots. I won't mention who this woman was. Suffice it to say, I only had to see her at our home once and it's a good thing because she is probably the one that I would have pushed off the dock into the tide mud. Visiting the barn was a unique experience. It wasn’t like you drove a few miles, parked your car, got out, walked up the sidewalk, and rang a doorbell. Visitors had a certain protocol to go through if they wanted to be picked up at the roadside dock. Honk coming around the corner, park at the dock, wait for someone to bring the boat to get them, walk down the gangplank to the dock, negotiating rotting spots in the planks, get in boat, sit down, bail water if needed, paddle if the motor stopped and couldn’t be restarted, ride or paddle to the other side, get out of boat, negotiate more worn out wooden planks, go up gangplank, many times without a hand rail, walk across front yard board walk, and Voila! You had arrived! The Barn had a very homey feeling to it, thanks to Mom. She was a very good cook and baker. We were a family of humble means but Mom was the type that could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. When one first walked in through the sliding glass door, you were in a big living room. Up against the wall to the right was what we called “The White Cabinet.”  It was one of those old antique baking cabinets for kitchens. It had two cupboards up on top to hold spices, seasonings, shortening, salt and pepper, and any other baking needs. There was a third cupboard on, I think, the left side that had a receptacle with a sifter on the bottom that held a bag of flour. Under the cupboards, there was a flat surface to prepare food on and if one needed more room, there was a recessed metal table top that pulled out. Underneath this were cupboards and drawers for other foodstuffs, pots, pans, anything that one wanted it designated for. Mom brought this cabinet from Iowa. It was one of the things she bought at the Shenandoah, IA auction that she frequented a few times a month. She got some great buys there and took turns taking a couple of us kids with her when she would go. It was really a fun time to be with Mom. I remember when she brought home the white cabinet and told us she got it for $5.00. I remember she also bought a couple of the old Philco radios that were built in big wooden cabinets. They were 5 bucks a piece. She also bought a huge sideboard that she carried around with her, another 5 bucks, that ended up with Steve and I and is now in Deana’s garage, waiting to be cut up and turned into two end tables. Anyway, back to the white cabinet. No matter how broke we were when we lived at the barn, with a couple of exceptions, we always had homemade bread and cookies. Mom would make 10 to 12 loaves of bread at a time a couple times a week. It was a staple in our diet and one would think that many loaves of bread would last a long time, but with a family of 9 plus numerous guests, the bread got consumed very quickly. Mom didn’t always have all the ingredients she wanted to make the types of breads and cookies she wanted to, but she was great at improvising and coming up with her own ideas. She used the basic bread dough to make the best cinnamon rolls on the planet, baked rolls, and occasionally, a loaf of oat bread. She would add things like molasses or maple syrup to give the bread a different flavor. Watching Mom put together a big batch of bread on the white cabinet was a treat. I didn’t like a lot of the chores I had to do, but helping bake bread was a pleasure. I can’t even begin to describe how a dozen loaves of homemade bread smelled while they were baking. For me it was, and still is, the best fragrance that could fill a home. Because of our humble circumstances, Mom couldn't afford a dozen bread pans, so she improvised and used coffee, tomato juice, and smaller soup cans to make loaves of bread. Back then, the lids were the type that were metal and left a sharp edge when the lids were taken off by a can opener. Mom would take a pair of pliers and mash down the sharp edge all the way around the can so that the bread would not catch on it when it was being removed. She used different sizes of cans so that she could give away small loaves of round bread as gifts to others or maybe she did it just for fun. I know the smaller, soup size cans of bread were just right for one person. One of my most treasured memories is taking the bread knife and slicing off a nice thick piece of round, coffee can size hot bread, spread a good amount of butter on it, and eat it, warm butter running down the corners of my mouth and all over my chin. Or, butter the bread, put it on a plate, and dip some of Mom’s homemade pinto beans with ham hocks over it. A piece of homemade bread toasted, buttered, and smothered in homemade sausage or venison gravy is THE BEST THING ONE CAN EAT! If you haven’t had fresh, hot homemade bread and butter, you have no idea what you are missing. Mom would always save some of the bread dough for fried bread, which is another one of those memories that is so poignant that I can taste the fresh, hot fried bread and butter just thinking about it. Whether with just butter, butter and home-made jam, or shaken in cinnamon and sugar, Mom’s fried bread was so damn good, there are no words that do it justice. Mom was innovative with her cookies, too. Bulk foods showed up in the 70’s and Mom used to buy large amounts of trail mix with carob because it was less expensive than chocolate chips. Mom would make a basic toll house cookie dough and add the trail mix to it and turn out what, today, would be considered health food cookies. They were delicious! So tasty and filling, too. She used the same huge bowl that she made bread in, set it on the metal table that slid out of the white cabinet, to make a batch of cookies so that, maybe, they might last 3 or 4 days. I was a teenager at this time and, emotions being what they are for a teenage girl, I sometimes questioned whether or not Mom really loved me and my siblings or not because of our living circumstances. Of course, now, having raised a family and being a grandmother, I know that everything Mom did for us she did because she loved us. I mean, I learned how to make bread and baked extensively when I was raising my sons. Who, if it wasn’t for love of family, would bake a dozen loaves of bread a couple times a week and make 6 or 7 dozen cookies at a time? Who would take time to turn coffee, soup, and tomato juice cans into bread pans? Who would cart the white cabinet all the way from Blanchard, IA to Oregon because she loved using it to provide food for her family? My Mom, that’s who! I think the white cabinet eventually went up in flames when the barn burned down, which is a shame because it was a big part of our lives. We are told that we should not seek material things in this world, but I would give my eye teeth to have that white cabinet and all the memories associated with it. But more than anything else, I would love to have my mother here, strong and healthy, baking bread and cookies and reading stories to her children. My Mom wasn’t perfect. But I love that woman with a passion that I never really knew until I lost her last year. I appreciate the barn more now than I ever have and the memories are bittersweet. I can’t reminisce about our life way back then without my eyes welling up with hot tears and having them spill over my cheeks. The Barn was a very special place and only a few of us have memories of being there. I hope that, as I write this history, I am able to convey to the reader the reverence I feel for our home on The Yaquina River.

The Barn, Installment 29

I would be remiss if I didn’t include, as part of this narrative, our neighbors, the Mcmillans, who lived straight across the river from the barn. The family consisted of Grandma and Grandpa Mcmillan and Carol, David, and John, the grandchildren. There was also Don, the children’s dad, who wasn’t around much because he was in the Coast Guard. I don’t know why the children’s mother wasn’t present in their lives. We got to know the Mcmillans very quickly because we all waited for the school bus together. They were all very nice people and I enjoyed being around all of them. Carol was 2 years older than me, very friendly and outgoing, and had a couple of horses in the pasture that she let Jeni and I try riding. As I mentioned in an earlier installment, my experience riding one of the horses turned me cold towards ever wanting to become a horse person. Being thrown off an ornery horse twice didn’t exactly make me warm and fuzzy towards horses. Carol was somewhat of a rebel and smoked while waiting for the bus and occasionally, Jeni and I would join her. None of us were supposed to be smoking, but we were young teenagers, full of our own ideas and still on the heels of the late 60’s insofar as breaking away from the norm was concerned. Carol was an upper classman and I remember looking up to her because she seemed to have a wise air to go along with her rebel side. She was gregarious and outgoing and had a great smile, as did her brothers as well. I don’t remember much about their grandpa. He was quiet and did his daily chores, not saying much. But I remember their grandmother being a very outgoing, inviting woman. She seemed to like it when we would come to visit and hang out with Carol. Grandma Mcmillan was also a no-nonsense type of person. We could only visit after Carol’s chores were done. The family had a female Doberman named Cass. She was a very well-trained dog, but was also friendly and liked people once she knew they were okay. They also had a small terrier type dog named Zigzag that loved to retrieve sticks from the river. I remember a time when we were visiting and Grandma Mcmillan took us out in the back yard to look at the new puppies that Cass had given birth to a few weeks earlier. My memories are a bit faded, but there were at least 6 or 7 puppies and they all had bandages on their ears. I didn’t know until that day that certain breeds of dogs got their ears and tails cropped. When I found out why the puppies were bandaged, I was mortified that someone would put dog’s through that type of pain. Then I learned that their tails were going to be cropped and I was speechless at the thought of the brutality. Grandma Mcmillan explained to me the why of it all, good breeding traits, etc., but it didn’t keep me from wanting to open the gate of the enclosure that the puppies were in and let them all go free, like Elliot did with the frogs in ET.

When my brother, Jesse, returned from Vietnam, Carol developed a crush on him. I don’t think anything ever happened between the two of them, but I do remember her being twitterpatted over him. One of the things we used to do a lot with the Mcmillan kids was talk to them back and forth across the river. We would hang out on the dock and they would be on the bank of the river on their side and we would talk up a storm to one another. It was certainly a much different type of communication than we have now with all the texting that goes on. One night in November, Carol was on the river bank on her side, talking to us and Jesse. The tide had come in, but was getting ready to turn and go back out to the ocean. This meant the current was going to get very strong. Carol decided to hop in the river and swim across to the dock. I think her hormones drove her to it. At the time, it didn’t seem a particularly dangerous thing to do, but thinking back to that event now, we all should have been telling her, NO! DON’T DO IT! Not only was the current strong and the undertows aplenty, it was pitch black, the only light being the street light on a pole on the bank of the river on our side and the faint light shining down from the upstairs living room windows. The current could have easily taken her down the river and the outcome would have been tragic. But that didn’t happen. Carol was a very strong swimmer and she managed to make it all the way to the dock. Jesse helped her out of the water and Jeni and I ran for towels and something to keep her warm. I couldn’t believe she actually swam across the river, fighting the current, in the dark, and made it!  It’s amazing what a crush on a returning soldier will drive a person to do. We talked and laughed in the November darkness, bundled up in our coats and warm clothing. I can’t explain the feeling of that night. We were just kids, 14, 15, 17, and 19, hanging out in the darkness on an old, worn out dock, alone, away from grownups, fresh, clean air in our noses, talking about nothing more than rock and roll music or what was playing at the Ross Theater.

David Mcmillan was a rebel too,. I don’t think he liked living with his grandparents. He seemed restless and I think he was probably counting the days to his 18^th birthday so he could be free to do what he wanted. He and I had a brief flirtation but it didn’t last very long. I just wasn’t interested in boys at that time. I was focused on my responsibilities at home and at school. Anyway, David loved it when his grandparents would go to town for a few hours and leave him alone. He had a really nice stereo system in the basement of their home. When he was alone, he would open up the sliding glass doors of the basement and blast Pink Floyd across the river. It wasn’t exactly my kind of music, but it was fun to hear the music coming across the river. David had a friend, I don’t recall his name, but he would show up now and then and we would all talk back and forth across the river. This friend developed a crush on me, which I wasn’t at all interested in. There was a school dance coming up. David invited his friend to the dance. He wasn’t from Toledo, which back then, if you weren’t from the same community, you couldn’t take part in school activities. How he got in, I don’t know. If I remember right, he had been drinking, too. Back then, we had live music for our dances and they were good bands. They played all the great music of the 60’s and the current rock and roll hits of 1970. I was lucky enough to have attended this particular dance, unfortunately. David’s friend asked me to dance a slow dance, so dumb, naïve me said okay. I was a freshman, 15 years old, and had only danced with my dad a couple of times at country and western dances he and Mom had attended. After a few seconds of dancing with this…dumbass…he pulled me in really close, trying to nuzzle my neck, and I felt something hard on my leg. I was mortified when I realized what was happening. My mind raced quickly as to what to do while I was feeling revolted by his disgusting display of rigid crudity. This was David’s friend and part of me didn’t want to insult David for that reason. But my sense of decency far outweighed insulting David. I suddenly shoved the dancing partner away and walked off the dance floor. I was humiliated and embarrassed, even though no one but me and him knew what happened. I never wanted to look at that boys face again or talk to him and I didn’t. I only remember getting to go to about 3 or 4 dances the whole time I was in high school and, unfortunately, this is my first memory of dancing with a boy in the Toledo High School upper gym. It really skewed my view on dancing with men. In my older years, when I used to go out once in a while, listen to music, and loved dancing, I always preferred dancing with my cousin, Deana, and my sister, Jeni, than dancing with the opposite sex. Funny how one bad experience can ruin something as wonderful as dancing. I would like to look back at that time and give this young man a pass because he was just overcome by raging teenage hormones and alcohol, but I can’t.

 

The Barn, Installment 30

 

I was sitting in my recliner, talking to Glen a few moments ago. He was telling me a story about a time he was left at home to fry a pheasant for dinner, which is turning out to be a hilarious story, but I cannot relate it here to the audience because these are barn stories. But his story reminded me of something that happened to me at the barn. I think the second year we lived there, Mom decided she wanted some ducks, so she bought a male and several female Mallard ducks and also a couple of Muscovy ducks of different sexes to breed. It wasn’t too long before we had more ducks than we knew what to do with. The females lay 10-15 eggs to sit on and most of them hatch. It was fun watching the ducklings make their way into the world, follow their mothers around the farm, and go into the river to swim. Baby ducks are probably one of the cutest animals on the planet. And they are very entertaining to watch. But they grow up fast and once Mom’s ducks were adult’s, it was a bit overwhelming. For one thing, they ate slugs and it was disgusting. Here are 20-30 ducks running around the farm with slug slime hanging off their bills. Yes, good for we humans who don't like slugs, but bad because the thought of anything eating a slug is repulsive. Another thing about adult ducks is that there were always more male ducks hatched than females and the males were always trying to breed with the females. No matter what time of day it was, male ducks, sometimes 2 at a time, were hopping on a poor, defenseless female, and having their ducky way with them. And for a young, teenage girl such as myself, to see a male duck mount a female and grab her by the back of her neck with his hard beak and hold on and pinch while having his way with her was cruel, regardless of whether it was natural behavior or not. How could something so cute when it was a baby grow up to be such a disgusting pig man? Mom got a good array of different colored ducks when the Muscovy ducks bred with the Mallards. The Muscovy’s were originally pure white with a thick, red patch of skin on the back of their upper bill, which are called Caruncles. They are also called a face mask.

 

 

 

 

  

One day, Mom decided it was time to thin the herd. We had too many male ducks and their lewd behavior was taking a toll on the females. Our neighbors across the river, name of Benson, wanted some ducks and Mom obliged them. So one early Saturday, sunny morning, we went to wrangling the male ducks. It wasn’t very difficult. All you had to do was scatter some food across the yard and they all came running. Mom had a big box in the boat to put the ducks in as we captured them. Of course, we couldn’t get through this little chore without the male whore ducks jumping all over the females. Not even food distracted them from wanting to spread their seed. And, boy, howdy, did they ever…spread their seed. Mom was barking orders at we children as we tried to round up male ducks. Mom was good at being a foreman. It seemed to suit her personality. And, having had 9 children, it was probably a role she had to assume to keep some sort of order among the troops. She was standing not to far away from me, two ducks in hand, and I was trying to catch this one male that was acting like the Artful Dodger. All of a sudden, the male duck I was after got distracted by his hormones and a cute little female duck and that was his undoing. Mom started yelling, “Get him, Judy, quick!” and I went for it. Ducks are quick when it comes to planting their seed. I tried to get him before he got her, but to no avail.  He made his way onto a female, so I grabbed him and pulled him off. As I swung him up in the air, thinking, “Got you, sucka!” a bright orange corkscrew looking duck appendage swung around and fell on my hand! It was thick with duck semen and I started crying out, “MOM! THE DUCK’S PENIS FELL ON MY HAND AND IT’S STICKY! ARGGG!” I was almost in tears! I was so grossed out I could not believe it. Even though I had lived in rural areas my whole life, I had never seen a duck penis nor had one ever landed on my hand while he was in the middle of his dicky duck duty. All Mom said to me was, “Oh, Judy…go put him in the boat.” Just like when I fell in the tide mud up to my knees and lost a shoe, I quickly got over the moment and went on with life. A wet duck dick went wild and I had to witness it first “hand”, it wasn’t the end of the world. Except that, it felt like the end of the world for a few seconds. So was another day in the life of living on The Yaquina River in a big, white barn. Incidentally, because of that experience, I have never tried eating duck nor do I have the desire to try anything ducky. It’s funny now, but way back then, I was mortified and thought I must be the only person in the world to know what it feels like to have a semen coated duck dick on the back of my hand. If nothing else, barn stories are educational.

The Barn, Installment 31

Living at the barn was a very unique experience, although at the time, no one, with the exception of my mom, realized it. While we were crossing the river from side to side, carrying our belongings, groceries, people, and whatever else we needed to live, building fires in home-made wood stoves, living in nothing but a barn, listening to bears tear up the downstairs, fishing lumber out of the Yaquina, shooting deer out of season when we needed meat, living in a rat infested environment,  having people visit, and a host of other unusual living events, it was just every-day life to us and we all took it in stride to the best of our abilities. Mom never was one to go along with convention in any aspect of her life, so living an unorthodox lifestyle didn't bother her. When I think of the hard work mom put in on making the 40 acre farm a place of beauty and comfort for her family, I wonder where she got the energy to do it, especially having had 9 children by 2 husbands. Lois Davenport, aka, Mom, Aunt or Auntie Lois, Cousin Lois, Gramma Heard, Long, and eventually going back to her maiden name, Davenport, seemed to have vaults full of energy to call upon for most of her life. She worked hard on the farm and when she worked a job and she did it all to help support her family. Mom didn't want to work outside the home. She liked staying home and taking care of her family. Unfortunately, her choice of husbands didn't allow her that luxury, so she had to work as a bartender and make tips in order to keep food on the table and clothes on her children's backs. I know that many people in town thought our family was white trash because of how we lived, but they were ignorant of the facts and had no understanding of what our life was like because they never bothered to get to know us.  Living at the barn on any typical weekday consisted of getting up, getting a bath, dressing, eating breakfast, helping get the younger siblings get dressed and ready for school, and catching the bus. Sounds pretty normal, as daily life goes. The only difference is that we lived on a big, beautiful, 40 acre farm that was on the Yaquina River, in a warm, cozy(most of the time) barn that was being remodeled into a home, and got to ride across the river every morning in the boat, Mom singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" out the upstairs window, and then back across the river to the barn after school. Every evening we gathered around a big, hand-built dining table to take supper together. Jeni and I usually helped with dinner. There was always home-made bread or rolls or cinnamon rolls or home-made pie to go along with the meal. The pantry was always filled with home canned goods from the garden and the orchard. There was always lively talk at the supper table which almost always included children teasing one another. After dishes were done, usually by Jeni and I, we would go to our separate corners to do homework if we had it or there could be music. I loved to read so I usually did all my homework in study hall so I could use what little spare time I had at home to read books. Sometimes we would get phone calls, but not too often. Television was sporadic. There was no cable tv, just an antenna on the side of the barn that pulled in a few very snowy tv stations. We had a turn table that was used most of the time to play vinyl records and it was well used. We listened mostly to country/western and rock and roll. I remember having a plug in near the front huge window and this is where we would gather around the turn table to listen to music. We had "Snoopy and the Red Baron", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", and "Frosty, the Snowman" albums that were standards every Christmas season. We even played them in between because we loved the stories and songs on the albums. Jeni and I had a "Tumbleweed Connection" album by Elton John that we loved. We knew every word of every song on the album. My favorite song was, "My Father's Gun." I'm not sure why. I just liked the feeling of it. At night, when bedtime would arrive, it was a great time for me and Jeni to lay in bed and talk to each other about the day, life's events, school, our complaints about Mom and our responsibilities every day. Our bedroom in the top of that big old barn reflected our musical tastes and what was important to us during the early 70's. The walls were rounded plywood that followed the curve of the barn roof and never finished, so we would write our favorite song lyrics here and there. Carole King's "I feel the earth move under my feet" and James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend" are the two I remember right off the top of my head. There were many more because the early 70's gave us some of the best music to ever be written from the best bands. Every day there was always "the barn, the boat, the river, and the road." Another song I'm bound to write. We didn't have what other people had. We didn't have a finished house with insulation, air conditioning, oil or electric heat. We didn't have finished floors with wall to wall carpeting and fancy furniture to go with it. We didn't have friends right up the block or a grocery store a few blocks away. We didn't have a two-car garage and new vehicles to drive. We didn't have that "Pleasant Valley Sunday" look that other people had. We didn't have to keep up with the Jones' because Chuck Fritz was the only neighbor we had close by. We didn't have a well-manicured yard with a fence to keep other's out. And I'm glad, because what we had that other people didn't have was something unique and special. We had a free, wild-spirited way of life that no one can really comprehend unless you were there and lived through it. We had the barn: three levels of unfinished walls and floors, filled with a family who loved one another through trials and tribulations. It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was our life and each time I reminisce about the years our family lived there, my eyes well up with tears and spill out onto my cheeks.

The Barn, Installment 32

 

I remember when I turned 15 as clearly as though it was today. We were living out in the country past Sandy, Oregon. The morning of my birthday, I awoke with the thought, “I am 15 today. I only have 3 more years before I’m legally an adult and can make my own decisions.” And that thought is what sustained me through the next 4 years until I got married. I’m not sure what other young women went through as they matured, but at 15 I immediately wanted my own life and for the next few years, my mind held onto the fact that I was almost there. I didn’t hate my life with my family but I had worked so hard from the time I was 6 years old, and taken orders from Mom, that I sincerely wanted to be the captain of my own ship. The 4 years I spent at the barn were some of the best years of my life. And I took them for granted, of course, because we truly don’t know what we have until it’s gone. I started dating Steve Wheeler at the end of our sophomore year in high school. I wasn’t really interested in a serious relationship with any boy but I enjoyed hanging out with Steve, Ramona, and our other friends. We dated for almost 2 years before the icky love thing happened. My friend, Ramona, and Steve actually set it all up. One day in school, Ramona told me Steve had asked her out on a date. I said okay. It didn’t really bother me because I wasn’t in love with Steve. But it started eating at me as the day went by and by the weekend when the date with Ramona was supposed to happen, I was on the date instead. And the rest is history. We fell in love or maybe I did love Steve but just didn't really know it. Steve had been infatuated with me, but I wasn’t with him. He was a good friend that I did activities with. He came out to the barn all the time and hung out with the family. My younger sisters and brothers adored him and liked the attention he gave them. He had motorcycles in common with my younger brothers and would help them mechanic their heaps. As mentioned in an earlier installment, he and his biking buddies would ride over the mountains to the barn, then on up to Elk City. Before we got serious, on my 17^th birthday, Steve and Clem Carkhuff came out to the barn for a small birthday party. We didn’t have parties too often, but this one was special I suppose. Ramona was there, too. Steve had brought me a present. It was a dainty heart necklace with my name engraved on it. I had never had anyone give me a gift like that and I was embarrassed and speechless when I opened the box and saw it. Mom and Ramona finally had to tell me, “Judy, say thank-you at least!” My thoughts were racing, wondering if this meant that Steve wanted me for his girlfriend because I definitely wasn’t ready for that. I felt a sense of panic and looking back at that moment, I wonder why a small heart necklace could bring out such heightened emotions. So I said thank-you and recovered and went on with life. After we started going together, he was out at the barn even more often. The night he gave me his class ring, we were out on the deck of the barn making out, and “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues was playing in the background. Steve took a ring out of his pocket and asked me to go with him. I said okay. Then we both started hearing giggling, turned around towards the sliding glass door, and all my younger brothers and sisters were spying on us. I was embarrassed at the time, but, thinking back on it, I laugh to myself and find that their spying is a fond memory. I remember shortly after Steve and I became an item that my brother’s Jesse and Josh were both visiting one weekend. I had a date with Steve that weekend and both brothers got to meet him before the date. Jesse and Josh were both teases, Jesse being, by far, the worst tease of the two of them. But this particular night, Josh definitely took the prize for Teaser of the Year.  When I got home from my date, Josh and Jesse were in the shop, which was right under the bathroom, tinkering around with some motor, and Josh started questioning me about Steve, giving me a hard time about going out on a date and being with a boy, etc. I guess that was his way of being a big brother. At some juncture in the conversation, Josh said, “You know Steve’s a faggot.” That was a popular word to call people back in the 70’s. Josh was trying to get my goat, and he did. I took the bait and yelled, “He is not a faggot!” I mean, back in those times, that’s about the worst thing one could be called. Josh and Jesse both started laughing. Josh kept saying, “Judy, you’re going out with a faggot.” Plus, my brother, Josh was always one to be able to add details to a story so he was enumerating to me all the reasons why Steve was a faggot. I was becoming very frustrated and upset. After all, this was a boy I was dating and in love with and my big brother was calling him that horrible name. I thought my brother didn’t like Steve and that made me unhappy, too. Eventually, Josh fessed up to the teasing and I settled down. Speaking of Josh…

Josh and Sue lived out on the farm for a while. The old house up in the canyon was still standing. It was a terrible mess, even worse than when we had to live in it temporarily. Josh and Sue wanted their own space, so they cleaned up one of the rooms in the old house and it turned out really cool. Picture this: 1972, An old, broken down, Victorian style house on a 40 acre farm along the Yaquina River. Some of the rock and roll hits of the day were Crocodile Rock by Elton John, Layla by Eric Clapton, Papa Was a Rolling Stone by The Temptations, Heart of Gold by Neil Young, You’re So Vain by Carly Simon, Black and White by Three Dog Night, and Saturday in the Park by Chicago. Smoking pot and using LSD was common among the hippie generation. Josh and Sue turned a dirty, musty smelling room in the aforementioned house into a thing of beauty with wall hangings, black light posters and black lights, and hanging beads. There was incense, scented candles, peculiar art deco, and posters of some of the rock idols of the day. Walking into this room was an experience all its own. Sitting in this room, black lights illuminating the wall art, patchouli incense wafting into one’s nose, Three Dog Night playing in the background, made a person feel like they were in a whole different world. Trying to explain the 60’s and 70’s to the masses that didn’t live through it isn’t an easy thing to do. It’s like my mom trying to explain what it was like to live through WW2 and me trying to completely understand it. It’s impossible to capture the feeling of times past. Time seems to have its own ebbs and flows and once the current of the present time has passed, the essence is gone. Only those who lived through particular times really know what those times felt like. So, Josh and Sue had a hippie room that I wished I could have upstairs in the barn. Although I was a rare bird who abstained from the drug and pot smoking culture of the day, I enjoyed the rest of the movement. There was something serene and comforting about long hair, rock and roll, and the smell of incense. So, for a while, we got to enjoy walking from the barn, across the railroad tracks, and up the path to the old house and enter Josh and Sue’s Psychedelic Psyhack. Once they moved away for good, it was lonely not having my brother’s wisdom, rock and roll knowledge, and dry, razor sharp sense of humor and Sue saying, “HONEY! HONEY!” to Josh all the time.

Installment 33

It was always nice when one of my older brothers were at the barn. Josh and Sue were always a welcome relief when they would come to visit and bring my niece, Tammy, or as we all called her, “Big T.” I have vivid memories of a time when Sue fell down on the roadside dock gangplank and hurt her back. I remember it being dusk. I think Jeni, Mom, Josh, Sue, and I were all there. Sue was holding Tammy in her arms when she fell and it’s a miracle that Big T and Sue didn’t go into the water because there was no railing on the gangplank. I don’t recall who grabbed the baby, but I do remember Sue lying on her back moaning in pain. Josh took Sue to the hospital and we took Tammy across the river with us. We were all worried sick about Sue because she was crying out in pain as Josh took her away. We waited and waited to see headlights coming around the corner, hoping it was Josh and Sue and that she would be okay. Later that night, around 10, they finally got home. I’m not sure how Sue mustered up the courage to take a shot at walking down that gangplank again and come across the river in the boat. I will give credit to the drugs she was on. She was pretty relaxed when Josh got her across the river, out of the boat, up the gangplank, across the walkway to the deck, and into the barn. I remember Sue waking up a lot during the night and having hallucinations about what was across the river on the road. She thought road lights were something else entirely. Of course, the next day, we all chided her about being out of her gourd the night before. Sue had wrenched her back and it didn’t take her long to recover. We were all relived because Sue was a part of our family and cared for deeply.

While Josh was in the Army, Sue came to live with us at the barn. This was pre-Big T. Now she could have chosen to live in civilization in Portland with her mom but she wanted to live at the barn with Josh’s family and who could blame her? We were the coolest people on the planet. I was the oldest sister in our family and once I warmed up to Sue, I knew what it was like to have a big sister. She was very entertaining, quick witted, loving and caring in regard to all of us. I remember she loved holding Audry when she was a baby. This was a source of contention with me because at the time, I didn’t like Sue and thought she was all wrong for Josh. My objections were based on the fact that she bleached her hair blonde and wore tons of makeup.  Once I stopped judging her on appearance, I found a very warm, caring person. While Sue lived with us, we had so much fun together. Sue, Jeni, and I became closer as sisters through daily chores and playing with the younger siblings. Sue, Jeni, and I spent hours in our bedroom talking about girl stuff. Sue had been to beauty college and taught me a lot about how to care for my hair and skin. I remember her telling me to use mayonnaise for conditioner when we didn’t have conditioner. Mom, Jeni, and I taught Sue a lot about homemaking. Sue missed Josh terribly. We all wrote to him regularly while he was in boot camp. One night, we decided to take some Polaroid pictures for him. We got an empty whiskey bottle of Dad’s to use as a prop in some of the pics. Sue had 2 of these cream-colored, round, vinyl pillows from some car and we used those as props as well. We all took turns taking pictures of each other in sexy or goofy positions. One of the pictures was of Sue naked from the waist up, holding the round pillows up in front of her breasts, her head jauntily tilted up and to one side with provocatively puckered lips. There was one of Jeni and I sitting on the bed with the whiskey bottle in Jeni’s hand, posing as if we were drunk. There was also a picture of me sitting on the bed in nothing but a button up shirt and panties, legs straight out in front of me, ankles crossed, holding the whiskey bottle. I had a screwed-up face because I had tipped the bottle up to simulate taking a drink and there were a few drops of whiskey left in the bottle and it left a bad taste in my mouth. There were 5 or 6 pictures total and we put captions on the back of each picture and called the series, “The Free 3.” I had the pictures for years and years and now I think I only have one of them and have no idea where the rest of them went. I wish I had made sure they were safe because I know that my descendants would enjoy seeing the pictures and reading the story.

Installment 34

The summer before my senior year of high school, 1973, my Uncle Bill and Aunt Mickey and their 5 children moved into the barn.  Mom and Dallas Sr. had taken the younger 5 siblings and moved to Phelps City, Missouri. I don’t recall why. I mentioned these events in an earlier installment.  I never thought Mom would ever leave the farm once we were established there. I thought her running from state to state with the family for almost 10 years was over. I guess it wasn’t. Mom has passed away and I don’t think there is anyone living that I can get information from that would know why they decided to move again and leave Jeni and I behind to await Uncle Bill and Aunt Mickey’s return. Anyway, this installment is dedicated to the time we spent with Uncle Bill and Aunt Mickey. The short time that Jeni and I were alone at the barn made me really appreciate my younger brothers and sisters. The barn was so empty without them and my parents. The insides of the house looked the same. All the furniture was there. There was food in the pantry. Outdoors everything looked the same. The yards, some of the kid’s toys and bicycles, a couple of old vehicles, the grape arbor on the east side of the barn, a little bit of wood stacked up for winter. The docks, the boat, the river, everything was the same. Nothing had changed. Except, there wasn’t a family there anymore. Just 2 lonely teenage girls who were left on their own to fend for themselves until the new family arrives. Looking back on events, I don’t recall feeling any type of resentment because Jeni and I got left alone for weeks until Uncle Bill and family arrived at the barn. When I reflect upon that time, I feel like I was in robot mode. I dealt with the situation the best as I knew how, didn’t worry about anything and knew that it was a temporary situation until the family arrived from AZ. I didn’t feel abandoned because I did not want to move to Missouri. I was determined to finish high school in Toledo come hell or high water. Plus, I had a boyfriend that I loved very much and didn’t want to leave. Regardless of how difficult it was living at the barn, because it wasn’t exactly “normal” living, I loved the farm. I felt protected when I was there. It wasn’t like someone could just drive up, park their car, get out, walk up to the door and knock. Unless you had “the keys to the castle” you weren’t getting access to our country farm. I liked that type of privacy even in my youth. I liked the fact that people didn’t have easy access to our home and couldn’t easily inflict themselves upon us. It was such a relief to have my uncle and aunt show up at the barn with their children. I think this was my first realization that a home is just an empty shell unless there are people to dwell in it. I was so glad to see my relatives move into the barn. I loved my younger cousins and enjoyed each one of them. I had not grown up around my aunt and uncle’s family continuously, but there were times when we were moving around that we lived close to them so I knew them and Becky and Brian. Aunt Mickey had always treated me so good and sometimes rescued me, all by myself, and took me to her home and made me the best crispy, golden brown hash browns I had ever tasted. Years later, I asked Aunt Mickey why I had these memories of being alone at her home and she said, “You were a very little girl and had big dark circles around your eyes from all the work you had to do helping take care of your younger siblings. So, I just wanted to give you a break and let you be a little girl.” Those fond memories of Aunt Mickey are why I was so glad to see her set up house in the barn. I had no memory of sampling her cooking, other than the hash browns, but I soon found out that my aunt was an excellent cook and also made the best homemade sticky buns on the planet. I was in hog heaven the first time I sampled these tender, buttery, cinnamon flavored treats. After that, even though I was 17, I would beg Aunt Mickey like a little kid for her homemade sticky buns. I remember thinking, at 15, that I couldn’t wait until I was 18 and could have a life of my own, unencumbered by adult supervision. But that summer after my aunt and uncle moved in, I was very thankful that I had them in my life because I knew when I turned 18 that I wasn’t ready to be on my own. I still had a year of high school left. I also knew that I wanted a big family around me to love and care about until such time as I left home. I loved all my little cousins. Becky was only 6 years younger than me so she and I immediately started hanging around one another at home. Jeni and I had a big bedroom downstairs where the living room used to be. We would invite Becky to hang out with us at night and we would all talk, giggle, and laugh like young girls do. Jeni eventually moved to Portland to live with Aunt Mary and Uncle David and I had the big bedroom all to myself. It was the first time in my life that I had my own room and I really liked it. But I also enjoyed having Becky, and sometimes the other kids, too, come to my room and hang out. I remember a time where we(Becky and me) were both sitting on my bed, going through the phone book and reading names out loud because they were corny or pronounced funny. I remember coming across the name “Kuntz.” Becky was the one that was reading that name out loud and she pronounced it “Cunts” instead of “Koonts.” The minute she said the word, she snapped her lips shut, looked up at me with huge, round eyes of total surprise, and we both busted up laughing! We giggled for a half hour over that one name. Life with Aunt Mickey and Uncle Bill wasn’t much different than when Mom and Dad and all my siblings were there. I felt the same sense of closeness with all my cousins and aunt and uncle. Aunt Mickey had a treasure trove of romance and other types of novels that I thoroughly enjoyed. I never wanted for something to read while Aunt Mick’s library was around. I had read every book in the barn over and over and when I was at school, I always took every opportunity to read what I could from their library. Uncle Bill wasn’t around much because he was a truck driver. I’m not even sure what kind of a rig he was driving or who he worked for. But he did all the manly chores when he was around. We got in firewood together, cleaned up some of the messes that were laying about the east side of the barn. All in all, the time I spent with my Arizona family are memories that have stuck with me my whole life. Unfortunately, they didn’t stay long at the barn and moved back to AZ the following spring. Mom and Dad and my younger siblings moved back from Missouri and in the interim, Josh, Sue, and Big T came and stayed with Jeni and I.

Installment 35

My cousin, Beth Davenport, lived with us for a while at the barn when we were juniors in high school. She and I were very close and it was nice having her there with us. When we moved from Iowa to Oregon in 1969, we hooked up with our Davenport family again. During the 10 years moving from state to state, we would see them occasionally when we moved to Oregon. Beth and I were both 14 at the time and we instantly bonded, as many of the same blood do. Jeni and I would beg Mom and Uncle David to let us go to Portland and spend weekends with our cousins. Or they would make the trek to the barn. I discovered after Beth moved it that she had terrible nightmares. I mean, they were so bad that she would look like she was awake, talking to me, but she was asleep. At times, she even threatened violence while in that state. Jeni, Beth and I all slept in the same bed in our upstairs room. We made Beth sleep in the middle. That wasn’t the choice spot, but, hey, it was our bed and she was the intruding cousin!

Installment 36

When we moved from Blanchard, Iowa to Oregon in 1969, we landed in Portland, Oregon and hooked back up with our beloved Uncle David, Aunt Mary, and our cousins, Doug, Beth, Deana, Mike, and Marty. The last time I had seen them previous to 69’ was when I was a very young child. I think I may have been in 2^nd grade. We immediately bonded with our blood cousins and for the first time in my life, I felt like I had a real, lasting connection with people who I knew would never be taken out of my life, no matter how old I got or where I might live. While living in Sandy, Oregon, we got to see our cousins quite often. We spent the weekends together and had parties with them and their friends. It was one of the best times in my hectic, nomadic life. We children were always begging our parents to let us stay at one another’s homes. Jeni and Deana paired off and Beth and I did the same. We became almost inseparable and looked eagerly to weekends. We were all devastated when we had to move to the barn because, although Portland was only 2.5-3 hours from where we lived, it felt like it was a continent away. We knew it was going to be more difficult to spend weekends with our cousins and, although I didn’t say anything about moving to the barn, I was devastated that I would not be able to see and hang out with my blood kin and that included my aunt and uncle. They were almost strangers to me when we first showed up at their home in 69’, but I quickly warmed up to them. I very quickly grew to feel that they were my second set of parents and that had never happened before in my life. Mom was my main source of parental security. Having my aunt and uncle to look up to and depend on and love was something that added some much to my life. Surprisingly, our parents were very cooperative when it came to traveling back and forth to the barn and Portland so that we children could see one another. For a while, Beth came to live with us at the barn. It was really a great time in my life to have her close by. Even though Jesse and Josh were gone, we still had a full house, but there was always room for more.

Installment 37

I remember one rainy, winter day, I offered to do Beth’s hair and makeup. We were stuck in the house and had run out of things to do. Plus, that’s what we teenage girls did. We did each other’s hair and makeup and talked about boys. We decided to sit in the left front room between the wood stove and the big picture window. It was a cozy spot to be. We would be able to be warm and toasty and have a beautiful view of the river and surrounding landscape. Beth was skeptical about having me do it because, frankly, she didn’t trust me. I was a jokester and she was afraid I would mess her up deliberately. I begged her to let me do her hair and makeup and promised I would not turn her into Phyllis Diller. I started out with her hair. Beth had really tight, curly hair that she wore shoulder length. She didn’t let it curl naturally and even went to beauty parlors to have it set and styled to take some of the curl out of it.  I started out teasing her hair and spraying it to try to smooth out some of the curl and give her some decent looking bangs. As I sprayed and teased, her hair kept getting bigger and bigger on her head. A small smile formed at the corners of my mouth and the ornery wheels started turning in my head. The promise was off. I was going to give my cousin the biggest bouffant possible! I kept teasing, spraying, and smoothing her hair and making it bigger and bigger until it looked like a huge brown stick of cotton candy. No mirrors were allowed until I was done with both hair and makeup. Beth said a couple times that she thought I was making her hair too big but I said it was fine. Jeni sat silent and kept her mouth shut. I got done with the hair and started in on the makeup. At first, just like the hair, I thought I’ll do a good job. I enjoyed putting makeup on other people. But, just like the hair, I got carried away and little by little, by the time I got done with Beth’s makeup, she looked like a really bad imitation of Phyllis Diller. Now, for the reader, you have to understand that my cousin, Beth, was a very imposing figure. She had a very forceful personality and no filters when it came to what came out of her mouth. She didn’t mean to hurt people’s feelings but many times in the course of our conversations, she would say insensitive things that were hurtful. I will admit, to have Beth at a disadvantage and be able to have her at my mercy caused me to derive a bit of morbid satisfaction that, finally, I may, if only temporarily, get the best of her. After all, she had taken a photo of me sitting on the toilet inserting my first tampon and that was a mortifying experience. She deserved some sort of retribution! When I was done with the do and makeup, she went and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. I admit, my heart was pounding, wondering how she was going to react when she viewed my creation. She came out of the bathroom and looked at me with eyes that, if they could have, shot fire and brimstone at me. I don’t remember what she said, but I’m sure it was something that included the word “bitch.” I started laughing and wasn’t a bit scared because Beth was a good sport and broke into a grin. I decided the only thing I did wrong was not have a camera on hand to take a picture of my work of art.

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 [J1]