It's Only a Life: But It's My Life

By Esther G. Walker

At age 92, Esther G. Walker writes the progression of her life that hs brought her to this age of enlightenment. She shares the mantra which carried her through many difficult times. Her unorthodox child rearing methods has resulted in loving, caring children and step-children. In addition, she has touched the life of many children who have accepted her as friend, grandmother and mentor. Many men have been attracted to her colorful way of life. Their stories spice the later years.

It has taken a lifetime to make this ordinary woman into a unique and beloved character.

How she has managed to live so many lives in one lifetime? How could she close one door and immediately open the next door to adventures and living?

And she's not through yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Esther G. Walker
• Release date: Aug 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310529801

Esther G. Walker

Esther G. Walker, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of thirteen, has lived in the California desert for nearly 40 years. There she met the magical animals that became the subject of the seven-book Mario series She has written travel books, the juvenile “Boys’ Club,”, several novels, as well as hundreds of short stories. .. At age 92, she says, “I’m not done yet.”.

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IT’S ONLY A LIFE

...BUT IT'S MY LIFE

By

Esther G. Walker

Including some pertinent essays and selected fiction.

Copyright 2014 Esther G. Walker

Published by Esther G. Walker at Smashwords

This book is available at most online retailers.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 0 Introduction

Chapter 1 What Ever Happened to Castor Oil?

Chapter 2 1942

Chapter 3 The magic of Believing

Chapter 4 Divorce

Chapter 5 Surviving Divorce

Chapter 6 Jailhouse Blues

Chapter 7 Never Say Never

Chapter 8 Snoozy and Bobsdawg

Chapter 9 Pop Expresses Himself

Chapter 10 Off to a good Start

Chapter 11 Womanizer

Chapter 12 I'm an Artist

Chapter 13 Secrets Are Told

Chapter 14 Bob has a Stroke

Chapter 15 Mary DuBrock

Chapter 16 Let's Do It

Chapter 17 Remembering People and Places

Chapter 18 There was an Old Woman

Chapter 19 Thanksgiving

Chapter 20 Alzheimer’s

Chapter 21 The travels Continue

Chapter 22 Let's Get Going

Chapter 23 Ella and Bill Madison

Chapter 24 Aunt Dora et al

Chapter 25 More Family

Chapter 26 Wyoming

Chapter 27 Going into Mexico

Chapter 28 More About Mexico

Chapter 29 Return to North America and Bashfords’ Mineral Spa

Chapter 30 Random Thoughts

Chapter 31 More About Bashfords

Chapter 32 Indio or Brawley

Chapter 33 Indian Uprising

Chapter 34 Retirement Ends

Chapter 35 I'm A Good Driver

Chapter 36 Begin Anew

Chapter 37 The Joys of Desert Living

Chapter 38 What’s a Girl to Do?

Chapter 39 The writing Burg Rears Its Head

Chapter 40 There’s Such a Lot of World to See

Chapter 41 The Eyes Have It

Chapter 42 Whatever Happened to Judaism?

Chapter 43 What Do I Believe?

Chapter 44 School Days Memories

Chapter 45 The Activist

Chapter 46 Real Estate Lady

Chapter 47 Grand Daughter Daelyn’s Sad Story

Chapter 48 What about Rob?

Chapter 49 Growing Older

Chapter 50 The Adult Children and the Step Family

Chapter 51 The Black Widow

Chapter 52 I Become a Published Author

Chapter 53 What If?

Chapter 54 Oral Hull Adventure Camp

Chapter 55 Keeping Fit

Chapter 56 Invitation

Esther's Credentials

INTRODUCTION

Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music

--somewhere in my childhood

I must have done something good.

--Rogers and Hammerstein

I'm ninety plus years and enjoying my life. I can't help wondering why I have reached such a delightful point in my life. I must have done something good.

I only know that I am content and anticipate an after-life whenever I am sent for.

Trying to reconstruct my childhood is not easy. I was born in Sheridan, Wyoming on March 29, 1922.

Mother told me that I was a mistake. No, God doesn't make mistakes. I was put here for a reason -- a reason I haven't fathomed as yet. Perhaps it was to be the only surviving sibling at Mother's end of life. Perhaps it was to make the many gentlemen in my later life happy. Perhaps it has something to do with my activity with children or at the Braille Institute. Who knows? I'm sure that I do not know.

1922 in Wyarno. Wyoming holds few memories. There is still a one-room schoolhouse that stands, now surrounded by barbed wire fence. There is the old outhouse which I visited on my tour with Bob around the United States. Old smells and the fear of falling through the hole in the toilet cover are part of my distant memory.

A sweet memory of snow-covered hills, a sled, and Aunt Betty's wonderful laughter; a peal of laughter from Uncle Charlie as he played his saxophone and 'we three kids' danced around him. My Grandma Goldberg came from Omaha. Ewe tripped to a picnic ground and I stood beside her as she sat on the grass. Look, I'm as big as Grandma, I chortled. There was laughter and happiness in those days. Where did that all go?

I can see my brother Jules' bloody hand where he got it caught in the water pump and it tore off his ring and pinky finger of his left hand. How do I know that my daddy blamed Mother for this accident? Did he ever forgive her?

I can remember the taste of Orange Crush. I can remember the smell of Feels Naphtha soap as Mother scrubbed overalls in a tub in the sunshiny back yard. I can see the white-feathered chickens pecking at gravel and always knew that one of them would be our Sunday dinner.

I had two brothers, but I was invisible. There was never a thought that I might join in their games. Even at such an early age, my brother Allen did not belong to me. Jules was a happy, laughing boy. He was closer to my age and occasionally would allow me into his space. As we grew older, he and I grew closer and Allen and I grew further apart.

I can remember the house next door to our store/home. They were Polish, name of Kobelish. I can see a fence between our two places. I was never allowed to go close to that fence because those boys are nasty. They probably pee'd in their yard.

I was a girl and even at 5 years of age, I was to be protected from BOYS!

I recall the train ride as we left Wyoming. I had managed one year of school, so I must have been 6 or 7 years old. This was not my first train ride.

I was a cute, probably 4 year old, when my Aunt Dora who lived in Omaha was to be married. She had requested that I be her flower girl (Johnny Alexander was the groom). My Uncle Ike came to Wyoming and we rode the train back to Omaha. He teased me about sleeping in the little hammock above our bunk. I have pictures of this wedding. Wasn't I cute?

(Insert picture)

But there is nothing in my memory banks, other than the smell and taste of grandma's tomatoes picked fresh from the vine.

Back to the train ride from Wyarno. I can see and feel the wicker seats, so we must have gone coach. My next memory was walking into the little house that Daddy had selected for us in Seattle. It smelled of castor oil, so there must have been a coal-oil heater.

Seattle life is mostly a blank. We moved to a newly-built house. It still smelled of fresh lumber. We had neighbors who were friends of my brothers. I was not allowed to visit. When I hear the music of an ice cream wagon, I flash back to a scene of the ice cream wagon and the boys and girls chasing it down the street. Not me. I always got ice cream, so someone must have bought it for me as I sat on the front porch steps. I don't remember being sad. This was just the way of life. Girls were not allowed to be out of sight.

What memories do I have of Mother and Daddy? Not much. I must have lived my life in a daze. Mother darned socks at night. What an only sad memory of my mother. Daddy came home from work with a newspaper under his arm, sat next to the Philco radio and sullenly read the paper until Mother called us to the dinner table. Dinner was always torture. We were afraid that Daddy would ask us some question about school or what terrible thing we had done during the day. Dinnertime was the time for reproach and verbal punishment and the promise that right after dinner, you will be told what your punishment is to be. It's a wonder that any of us grew up without horrible digestive problems.

Daddy worked for an insurance agency and he had to set up appointments for the next day. We sat quietly and did homework or went to our rooms to read. My escape from everything was books. I read everything or anything. The morning cereal boxes had stories printed on them. I read cereal boxes, Big Little Books, library books; I must have read tons -- magazines, sign boards. I could live the lives of heroines in magazines and leave my own life in the dust. I even found some magazines under Daddy's mattress. Nothing was safe from my eyes.

Daddy must have been successful because soon he was hired by The Maccabees, an insurance company with offices in Tacoma, Washington. He was made District Manager and we moved to Tacoma.

Our first house, Howe Street on McKinley Hill, had a full basement. I can recall this because Mother canned fruits and vegetables and I was usually sent to the basement to get something. I was scared of that basement. It was dark and without a cement floor, smelled of dirt and (I am sure) rats.

There was an area by the front porch where we could put up a curtain and make-believe stage. We put on plays. Now, I was beginning to know my brother Jules. He and I were the planners of these stage shows. We had chairs and invited neighbor children to come to the entertainment.

We met the Smythe family. Ted Smythe worked for a moving company. My daddy probably sold him some insurance. They had three boys. I was again excluded from sociability. Pop (at this time, I must have stopped calling him Daddy) and Mother had them over for card evenings and dinners. This must have been a peaceful time in our family because I can remember only good times.

The Maccabees was a fraternal insurance organization, so it required that Pop and Mother plan activities for the membership. Between the two, they did a good job of picnics, bingo nights, pot luck dinners and many other activities.

Pop became State Manager of the Maccabees and Mother was President of the Hive, which was the women's end of the fraternal organization.

About this time, Pop negotiated a large club room and office on 12th and Pacific. Allen was assigned the job of Janitor. Don't ever let a speck of dust remain! Mother was assigned to care for the office. Oh, how I can remember the complaints from my perfectionist father as she misspelled a word. Her writing was illegible. Her addition was atrocious. But she was able to answer the phones to his satisfaction and keep the Lady Maccabees happy.

I was in Junior High School (Jason Lee) by this time. My days at school were sublime. I had girl friends to share confidences with. I had boys to look at and long after. I could stop at the library every day and take out as many books as I could read I could stop behind the donut shop and sneak a donut out of their discard barrel every day. I got to go on field trips.

One I remember well was the trip to the Wonder Bakery. The smell of baking bread; and didn't we think the white, soft bread was the best in the world. They had just invented Sliced Bread. We got to watch the multiple knives slice each loaf as it came along the line. We even got samples to take home. I'll bet mine never reached home.

I believe it was 1934. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was running for President. I don't know how Pop discovered this. FDR had a Maccabee Insurance policy. When he came through Tacoma, by train, making speeches from the rear platform of his campaign train, Pop wanted to present him with a bouquet of flowers from the Maccabees. I was designated as the flower presenter. What a frantic day that was. Mother had to buy me a new dress and shoes to replace my normal rundown-at-the-heels shoes, and get us to the Depot in time to greet Mr. Roosevelt. Pop was already there, wondering where his wife and daughter were, probably holding a fast wilting bouquet. We arrived as the train with FDR waving to the crowd slowly pulled out of the station. The silence on the ride home was deafening. I never heard that incident mentioned again, but I became a staunch Roosevelt Democrat from that day forward.

We would go to Hebrew School after school. We were learning to read Hebrew. Jules was studying for his Bar Mitzvah.

We were living at 1014 Sprague Street at this time.

Then tragedy struck. Life was never the same at our house.

I was 12 years old; Jules was 13. Mother had been collecting Indian Head pennies. We were told that some day they would be valuable. Jules had earned a dollar. He wanted in on some of the riches, so he went across the street to the store, and asked the storekeeper to change his dollar to pennies. As he was returning back across the street, looking through the pennies, he was struck and killed by a car.

Although we didn't know it at the time, this was Pop's first-born son, heir to his heritage of Kohanim. As a descendant from the Tribe that guarded the Tabernacle which contained the original tablets of Commandments, Pop was to pass this heritage to his first son. This was not just a personal tragedy for him, it was the end of the line of Kohanim. Again, I didn't know, he thought God was punishing him for having married a gentile.

His entire attitude changed He would not sit at the dinner table with us. He became the disciplinarian, punishing Allen for the most unimportant infraction. If we laughed or giggled about something, he scowled and asked, What do you have to laugh about?

He and Mother slept apart. He blamed her for Jules' death. If she hadn't been obsessed with Indian Head pennies, Jules would never have died.

Mother became interested in psychic phenomenon. Pop thought she was disallowing the Judaism that he had taught her, and it made a further rift between them. Although the Maccabee activities went on as before, there was no joy for Mother or Pop.

I don't know how Allen felt, but I again became invisible. Nothing I did was of interest, particularly to Pop. All he wanted was to see A-grades on my report card. Anything less was the subject of long lectures about my failures.

He was a perfectionist and became more so in the ensuing years.

Although I was nonexistent in his eyes, he increased his surveillance of my possible wrong-doings. He was determined that his daughter would do nothing to disgrace him. I was required to go to his office IMMEDIATELY after school. No after-school activities were allowed. If I was five minutes late arriving at his office, I received the long lecture on promptness and what terrible things could happen to girls who dawdled along the way to their father's office.

When I got to High School, things did not improve. I would walk to school with my girlfriends and discover that Pop was following us slowly in his car, just to be sure that we were not talking to boys or getting in other trouble.

Senior year at Stadium High School, I was allowed to try out for the senior class play, You Can't Take It With You. I became Reba, the colored maid. I remember stage fright from the first rehearsal to the final curtain.

I was taking typing and business courses in high school (Stadium) and became Pop's office help. He relieved Mother of her job and I was his errand boy, secretary and receptionist. Oh, woe, if I should have a typo on one of his letters. If he gave me a job to do, and it was not completed on his time schedule, I received the dreaded lecture.

Later in life, I came to appreciate his perfectionism since my careers required the same close attention to detail and timing as he expected of me at age 16.

Allen ran away from home, probably more than once. Mother was devastated but Pop's attitude was, Let him go.

When he graduated from high school, he almost immediately enlisted in the Marines. Since he was under-age, he required his parent's permission. Pop signed gladly. Here was a thorn in his side that was being removed. Of course, Mother acquiesced. Whatever Pop said, she did. This was the role model I learned from, for my future marriage. The Lord and Master, right or wrong.

But, Allen's displacement from our home did not end his involvement with family.

I was not supposed to know, but there was a girl in San Diego who claimed that Allen had gotten her pregnant and she wanted money from the family. This only added to my father's fury with this eldest son.

There had been the incident when Allen had been caught playing doctor with me. No, he wasn't caught. I couldn't keep my mouth shut and I got him in the worst trouble of his life. He was never allowed to be alone with me again. This probably accounted for his dislike or disinterest in me.

I was 13, Mother was 35. Pop decided that we needed a child to replace Jules. Was he still trying to have a son to pass on his Koahanim heritage? I never doubted it.

Charles was born in 1935. He was the joy of my life. As he grew a little older, I was his constant companion. He learned to read and write at an early age. He was genius smart. He was the subject of Pop's constant bragging. Then, he started school. He was so far ahead of kindergarten and first graders that he was bored with school and became troublesome.

This pattern continued and Pop let me alone so he could concentrate his lectures on Charles. His grades were always too low. He never completed his homework. He was never any help around the office or at home. Charles, of course, became withdrawn from the family and finally from me. To my knowledge he had only one friend, the boy next door.

When he graduated from Stadium High School, Pop still thought he was going to make his mark in life and when Charles was not accepted by the Jewish Fraternity University of Washington and flunked out his first year, Pop was devastated. But that was only the beginning. Charles met and married Rylla -- oh horror! -- not Jewish. Rylla converted to Judaism, but she was always that chicksa, to Pop.

Meantime, I had grown and - Glory Be - married a nice Jewish Boy, so temporarily I was the fair-haired child, particularly when I gave birth to a BOY. I was a Sunday school teacher at our synagogue and was bringing my two children up in the proper Jewish way.

CHAPTER 1

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CASTOR OIL?

How can I begin? With a realization that I am a part of history. I have been watching various historical programs. The stories that are now being depicted as history were the day-to-day events I grew up with.

I was born and radios were known as crystal sets. I didn't know anything about 78s, 33s, 45s, 4-Tracks or CDs or VCRs.

We shared our telephone with many neighbors, on a party line. Privacy? Ah, the joy of lifting the receiver and listening to the gossip of neighbors.

I lived when flour sacks were imprinted with designs so that mothers could convert them to underwear and slips.

I grew up in a time when movies meant you had to be able to read subtitles; no sound. Home entertainment center was the floor of the living room and the funny papers.

Frozen foods was the milk put on the window sill during the winter.

I was born before television, penicillin, polio shots, Xerox, radar, credit cards, laser beams and split atoms, ball point pens, panty hose, dishwashers, clothes dryers, electric blankets, air conditioning, and long before man walked on the moon.

Closets were for clothes, not for coming out OF. Fast food was what you ate during Lent. I was born before Gay Rights; gay was what everyone wanted to be.

Day care centers were Grandmas. There was no such thing as group therapy and nursing homes. But we did have institutions called Poor House for the homeless.

I never heard of an electronic typewriter. Our fingers were strong because we had to bang the keys of the L. C. Smith.

There were no artificial hearts, word processors, frozen yogurt and guys wearing earrings.

Time sharing meant togetherness. Never heard of condominiums. A chip meant a piece of wood. Hardware meant hardware and there was no such thing as software. Making out meant how you did on your exam. McDonalds and instant coffee were not heard of.

There were 5 and 10 cent stores where you could buy things for 5 cents or 10 cents. For one nickel you could ride a street car, make a phone call or buy enough stamps to mail a letter and two postcards. You could buy a new Chevy coupe for $600. No one could afford one even though gas was only eleven cents a gallon.

Coke was a cold drink. Grass was for mowing. And pot was something you cooked in or used to grow flowers in.

Rock music was Grandma's lullaby and aids were helpers in the principal's office. Sex change was unheard of; we made do with what we had.

Apple was a piece of fruit and rap was what you got on your knuckles for laughing in class. A blackboard was black, not white. Spell checker was your mother before you turned in your homework.

Never heard of jets, had no idea where Pearl Harbor was. We believed whatever was written in newspapers and our government-elected officials never told lies.

Climate change was one of the four seasons. Organ transplant meant the moving men were coming.

Flannel diapers and clotheslines were all the announcement one needed to know of a birth.

I can remember when all ills were cured with a tablespoon of castor oil. You would have to be plenty sick before you would admit illness and see Mother coming at you with the bottle of viscous liquid