I read somewhere that when writing one's autobiography, one should always omit chapter one. Consider it done except to say this story begins in 1958 and goes on and on and on...lol. But since I have been asked, and since it is most unlikely that Dark is in the running for Triviot of the Month, here goes -
I grew up on a 40,000 acre working cattle and Quarter Horse ranch in the wide open spaces of Eastern Oregon. West of Mt Hood it is rainy, green, lush, lots of agricultural pursuits, lots of people (and all that comes with them, from crime to culture)...etc. Eastern Oregon, home of the Pendleton Round Up, is a different world. It's dry and deserty in parts, dry and mountainy in other parts, not many people, very "cowboy" including a slight Texas-like drawl among the natives and comes with an unspoken agreement that the only-jeans-around-here are Wranglers. The boots are a given and everyone, rich and poor alike, receives a new pair every Christmas. My dad was a professional rodeo cowboy (calf roper and team roper) and did the rodeo curcuit until I was old enough to go to school - then he bought the farm so to speak:) I can milk a cow, bale hay, change sprinkler pipe and learned how to drive on tractors and pick-up trucks fixed up so I could reach the clutch and see over the steering wheel at the same time. I was an only child (but Catholic just the same). The closest neighbors had five kids (took the Catholic thing a little more seriously than my mother who has since been Methodist, Agnostic, and most recently, 7th Day Adventist) and as their scrapbooks show, I pretty much made myself a part of that family. Anyway, the ranch was very story book. It was mostly high grazing country. We'd take the cattle up to the mountains come spring, bring 'em home again before winter. Deer and elk were plentiful. Rattlesnakes were a bit of a bother. Always kept a jar of rattles above the kitchen sink, and one learned never to extend any part of the body from any safe port without first checking for snakes - a habit I took to the city with me much to the wonder and amusement of people I met there:) We always had assorted dogs, cats, sheep, pigs, chickens, packing burros, geese, raccoons, etc., living around the place. As might be expected, I spent a lot of time on horseback. We kids rode for miles around thru the wilderness, free birds - even rode with real guns strapped onto our saddles and managed never to kill each other. I recall getting lost in a canyon once. Night came and I was just a little worried, but it's true - the horse knows the way home. BTW, we could only get into the property come winter time by horse or plane so we also had a little farm closer to town. When I was a junior in high school, however, my parents sold the little farm and moved to the ranch year round. I stayed behind in a small apartment to finish school.
I rather enjoyed such independence at an early age! And I was, well, for the most part, a pretty well bahaved kind of high school kid motivated by grades and peer acceptance. Well, there were the times old Ron B. and I and others would head for the river in the middle of the day. Our high school sat within shouting distance of the great Columbia River, and much of my time was spent on one bank or the other:) Then there was the time Cathy B and I decided we wanted to know what it was like to be drunk and chose 7:30 am - just before algebra - to find out. I won't tell you what I did in biology class or the party at the Dodge City Inn :) Let's just say I managed to make it through without any major traumas save for an occasional difference of opinion with my opinionated mother:) I visit the "old country" now and then and become ever so slightly homesick, but I was rightfully voted most likely to leave the farm...
I left, of course, to go to college but there was one small problem: What should I be when I grow up and, really, was it necessary to grow up at all?? My first six terms of college were spent at a small state school not far from home - the cowboy college. Met a couple of girls from the coast here, Patty and Lynda. Lynda was the one with the car and the money and in search of a cowboy. Patty and I were the ones with the good scholarships and bad ideas. Never did get ourselves any cowboys unless you count Chubby Chase and WE DON'T! Ah, but we had a ton of fun and learned a lot they didn't teach in any of our classes! In fact, we were lucky to get to any of our classes. The second year, when we all moved into a little apartment together, was even worse. I remember Patty and I going to a math final one afternoon., (Lynda had dropped out by now to work the coveted graveyard shift at Albertson's and drag mainstreet during her off hours). About halfway thru the test Patty and I looked at each other and decided: 1) None of the problems on the test looked like anything we had seen in OUR books, 2) None of the other people in the room looked familiar did they? and 3) Was that man in the front of the room REALLY our professor?? My favorite professor was Hank Larom, Lit 101, 102 and 103. He always showed up late, golf club in one hand, a martini in the other. We paid more attention, however, to the students than to the professors. We had nicknames for everyone on campus: Easy (who left the dorm each Friday night with a typewriter case full of clothes), Charlotte Breast (the buxom Charlotte Best), Wienie Arm and his friend Milt from Freewater, Man and his Dog (a couple of hot lovers from off campus...we saw Dog emerge from the commons' restrooms one day with toilet paper streaming out from underneath her dress - still attached to the roll inside the bathroom...we still giggle over that one)...Hewy "Bullshit" Tularia, Vain Wayne, Linda Ball and her sister Liketo....Oh, and how could I forget Gladys Frump! We took her picture and put it on our Christmas cards that first year. Now we're considering uploading it as a gif for all of you to enjoy!! Oh, if only there had been AOL when we were in college - hehehe - I might not have lost my card key in the boys dorm and been called to the dean's office right after that panty raid! Oh well - Patty and I are still best of friends and partners in crime, and we still keep track of most of those people. We partied a lot but we avoided sex like we did p.e. classes...both of us still under the impression that good girls simply didn't do those things...not even my good friend Diane, the darling PRINCESS from my hometown (What in the world I thought she was doing with that football team that night, I'll never know).
Then it happened. Two years and three, er, uh, four majors later, I met a boy I couldn't resist. Oh, we didn't get married or anything. He was far from Mr. Right. He wasn't even Mr. Might-Do-In-A-Pinch. But he was cute. He was dangerous. He was easy and I was gone. See ya. I saw parts of Oregon, Washington and Idaho that aren't on the maps even yet. When I finally came back to chartered territory, I found myself in Seattle, alone (by mutual agreement), and ready to get serious again. Well, kind of anyway. I went to the U of Washington and studied anthropology. A degree in anthropology makes a lovely wall decoration. I learned to jump out of airplanes. I learned how to wait tables and make a living. I learned how to say no and when to say yes. I learned the true meaning of the word NORDSTROMS. Then I moved to Portland.
It was in Portland that I met Douglas, aka Berkley. The first time I saw him I looked but wasn't entirely convinced. The next time I saw him I thought he was rather, well, self assuming? He was in the process of inviting himself to a party to which he had not been invited:) And he had the nerve to show up! But it seemed we both liked Led Zeppelin and really, what better reason to start a long term relationship???
Berk and I are very different. He grew up in a ritzy part of Portland, a place called Lake Oswego, and couldn't possibly have led a more different childhood. Had a mother who ironed her husband's pajamas and was dressed to the hilt by the time her husband got home from work each night. Had a nanny to look after the kids even tho she, herself, did not work. Lived on white wine and was smaller than our last dog. Decorated and redecorated their homes for fun and pleasure, even made House Beautiful twice. In Eastern Oregon, the husbands didn't wear pajamas, dressing for dinner meant taking the old boots off and putting the good boots on, and a nanny was a goat. The only maids in town worked at Dodge City Inn and that was suspect, and no house was beautiful without at least one used horseshoe sculpture on the wall. I did love my mother-in-law tho, dearly, and was the best customer at the catered bar at her funeral (People in Eastern Oregon would be horrified at the thought of a CATERED funeral! But it's the way she would have wanted it!). She loved her children unconditionally and was very good at not getting too involved in our lives except for the baby christening thing. Shortly after our daughter Liz was born, Berk's mother asked if we had made any decisions regarding baptism. I told her we hadn't decided yet, that I had grown up Catholic and Douglas was Episcopalian, and now we were neither, etc., and we just hadn't decided what to do. A week later we received an invitation to our daughter's Episcopal christening along with a zillion other people...(Yup, it was catered). I just smiled and showed up on time. Berk's older sister, bright, pretty, and wonderful, proved to be quite a challenge for his mother too and was shipped off to boarding school right there in the city. She really stirred things up when she got to college and HAD SEX with some guy and got kicked out of her sorority, (Now the folks in Eastern Oregon would have gotten a kick out of that one. Sex is a normal kind of FARM THANG you know, hehehe, and can even be done in a pick-up truck while listening to Tammy Whynot if absolutely necessary). Oh, but it was THE family SECRET. And now it's not! Berlkey also has a brother who is quite impressed with himself and did everything right and by the numbers (which, of course, Berkley NEVER did), and a "baby" sister who is a teacher and as downhome as they come, unaffected for the most part by that Lake Oswego life. Berk's father has remarried - the widow of an old family friend and a really neat person. When Grandpa Berkley called us from Reno to say, "Guess what I did!! " I had visions of chorus girls running thru my head (He looks pretty good, a lot like Berkley only older - and the plaid pants of course), but he made a good choice. They seem to be on a perpetual honeymoon and spend their time between Mexico, the US and Europe...and avoid grandchildren like the plague.
But enough about Berk! We've been married a long time and might even be married a long time more! We'll keep you informed!!!!!!
Meanwhile...and to bring this sordid little mess to an end....Home has been the Oregon Coast for the past ten years. We spent a few months in Mexico and a few months traveling around the United States. Then I went back to school and got a degree in elementary education and a specialty in educational media. I work as an educational media specialist for two elementary schools and teach library and information skills to children K-5. I tell stories, do a little research, write grants, push computers, serve on a zillion committees, work for the state reading association, and on and on. When I finally get home at night it is to a little house in the woods that sits on the banks of Slick Rock Creek and on the edge of the Siulslaw National Forest. Slick Rock is a salmon stream that runs into the Salmon River which, eight miles later, empties into the Pacific Ocean. You can sit in a chair by the window and watch the salmon swim up the creek each fall. The beach, public, clean and beautiful, is about 10 miles from the house while Portland (gotta shop you know), is about 80 miles. Who-knows-how-many cats, (the dog died), two children, and a bunch of raccoons complete this little picture. The baby, btw, is Kelly, 18 months. He can say "football," "baseball," "basketball," "uh oh," and make long distance phone calls without assistance. Sister Liz is six, soon to be seven, and SHE can say, "I don't want to," "I don't care, I'm doing it anyway," and "You never let me do anything!!!!!!!!!"
Have been on AOL since August 91...didn't discover trivia until this August or September. But, well, I'm glad I did. Well, I THINK I'm glad I did. Let me think about that for awhile and get back to you - if they haven't cut off my phone line yet.
