Nightmares and Daydreams: A True Love Story

By Jeannine Dixon Seely

Nightmares and Daydreams is a love story: it is also a life story, proving that life, as a child is not always what we hope it should be.

Two kids meet and magic happens--but is it magical enough to soothe their battered souls?

What if your thirteen-year old friend had his legs blown off from a discharged bazooka shell? You, an eleven-year-old boy sustained life-threatening injuries as well?

What if that disaster happened in the basement of your very own home? Not on the battlefield during World War II, nor in a war at all!
In 1947 the tradegy flooded the airways and made the headlines in all of the Los Angeles newspapers.


What if your grandmother molested you in her cellar when you were just eight years old? You, a very private little girl kept it a secret. No one else knew: No one else will know until now.

The boy and the girl, who experienced those nightmares, explore the frightening incidents and delve deeply into their young, unusual lifestyles. So opposite of one another, so hurt in different ways. Both children on their own emotional roller coasters.

Now, in Nightmares and Daydreams, Jeannine explores the secrets of their confused and stressful childhoods. But it was not all sorrow for the two, and she shares some of their favorite side-splitting stories of their screwy teen times, madcap memories, and far-out antics they pulled off during their never dull fifty-seven years of marriage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475936865

Jeannine Dixon Seely

Jeannine Dixon Seely has taken four semesters of Creative non-fiction writing and in Photo Journalism at Shasta College in Redding, California.  Jeannine had a weekly Sunday column, ‘Let’s Visit’ in The Record Searchlight newspaper recently, and several other articles were published in the popular Northstate magazine, ‘Enjoy’. Her first book, ‘Business Suits To Cowboy Boots’ was published in 2005.

Book preview

Chapter 1

9781475936858_txt.pdf

Nineteen and Thirty-Five

Let’s begin this journey by meeting the boy in our story. On November 29, 1935, the stork dropped Lee Morton Seely into the core of a caring family and a circle of devoted friends who surrounded him with unconditional love.

Dubbed the perfect apricot baby, his mother, Patty, cherished him with all of her heart, but for the first several months of Lee’s life, it was Aunt Rosemary who acted as his part-time mother. Family friend Flavia, whose son was one month younger than Lee, took over at times and breastfed both babies, as she had sufficient milk for both.

The logic behind having stand-in moms was that they made it possible for Lee’s mother to help his dad build their dream home which was a wise decision, as he got three times the love and attention, plus the house was finished in record time.

Lee’s young days brought him extreme physical and emotional pain. The bodily pain came after a horrific accident occurred at that dream home, leaving Lee, eleven years old, and his best friend Jack, who was thirteen years old, severely wounded and hospitalized for several months, both on the brink of death.

As a rule, divorces were unheard of in the 1940s. There was a war going on, and families stuck together. Fathers were the providers, and mothers

were the stay-at-home, care-for-the-kids, darn-socks, iron-clothes, do-it-all, cookie-makers. But Lee’s mother had stars in her eyes. She was unable to cope, and not long after the accident, she filed for a divorce and it tore Lee’s world apart.

In Lee’s unstable world, suicides were frequent, and by his early teens, he was sometimes engaged in violent and combative conflicts with a woman friend of his mother—a real brute of a woman who behaved like and resembled an aggressive man.

Chapter 2

9781475936858_txt.pdf

My Name Is Lee

My name is Lee. I’m the guy in our story. The memories of my life are similar to the way I care for my yard. Certain things in the yard I find objectionable, so I weed them out to present a more pleasing and prettier picture. Others I modify, such as the braiding of a tree’s trunk. They become more interesting to me and seemingly to others—for example, the night-blooming cacti I started from seed or the native and wild grasses that I encourage to grow each year.

Some memories I hold on to and embellish in my mind. Others are recollections that I choose not to think of—like particular people or invasive plants. I am simply not interested in them.

missing image file

Lee Morton Seely

I believe I learned about selective memories from my grandfather—Papa. Prior to television, there were more family conversations and activities like listening to radio programs, such as the news, quiz shows, and dramas.

At family get-togethers, we often listened to war stories told by Papa. He recounted his adventures while serving as a captain in World War I. The stories were graphic and shocking, but somehow he told them with a positive spin. He never mentioned the four thousand casualties in one battle, even though Papa fought in that battle in France. It was a painful memory for him to recall, so he omitted it at story time.

Chapter 3

9781475936858_txt.pdf

My Early Days in Mexico and World War II

I grew up summering in Baja, California, on the coastline between Rosarito Beach and Ensenada.

My grandparents and parents had camped at that spot since the early 1930s, and over the years, they had become close friends with a fisherman named Juan Sisenia, nicknamed Shorty, and his two sons Enrique and Miguel. The three of them lived in a one-room hut constructed of cardboard, driftwood, and tin, with a crushed-seashell-and-dirt floor. Their rugged shelter stood on a knoll overlooking the breathtaking Pacific Ocean, where the high tides brought incoming waves that greeted the landscape a mere thirty feet from their haven.

The year 1940 found my grandparents, parents, their friends, and me making the customary two-week camping pilgrimage to the beach near Shorty’s. The weather on that entire trip was damp, drizzly, foggy, and muggy—just dreary and miserable for the entire two weeks, so everyone seemed motivated when it came time to break camp and return home to their cozy homes in the States. However, before we could break camp, monsoon rains drenched and soaked our canvas tents, sleeping bags, food, and clothes. Within hours, the meadow we were camped in became a quagmire, and with no paved roads, the cars and the teardrop trailers were stuck in the mud for another two weeks.

Finally, after a month of waterlogged camping in Mexico, the sun came to our rescue. Another week passed before the roads dried out enough for the men to pave the way with beach stones, in hopes that the cars could get enough traction to exit the mud.

We had understandably run fearfully low on provisions and of the rainwater collected for drinking. Papa, Mom, and Dad hunted when we needed meat, but it was Shorty who came to our aid and kept the camps stocked with fresh water drawn from a well located a mile or so down the road. His donkey, pulling a handmade sled made of driftwood and rope, delivered the water to our camp. He also brought us beans, tortillas, fresh vegetables, fish and lobster, alcohol for the adults, and goat’s milk for me, his little conajo. As a youth, I had run haphazardly through the sharp agave cacti. Shorty told my parents, "Your son runs sure-footed and fast like conajo, [rabbit]."

Shorty was a lobster fisherman by trade, but, not caring for the taste of seafood, he sold his catch to merchants or just gave it away. An old, fourteen-foot wooden skiff, propelled by two oars, took him out to sea most every day of his life. He deep-sea fished, oftentimes catching sea bass or yellowtail, but lobsters (referred to as bugs) were his main source of income, and the traps had to be checked daily. He created a lava-rock-lined tide pool for storing the bugs until buyers came weekly from Ensenada and Tijuana. We could always count on having lobster feasts whenever we camped in Mexico. Shorty sold them to us for fifty cents apiece, and they were enormous. Incredibly, Shorty did not know how to swim and did not have a life preserver on board his skiff.

Guns were illegal in Mexico in those days, just as they are today, but my family always took guns and ammo when we camped there. Shorty owned a rifle, but naturally, he could not buy bullets. Every summer, we took him a brick (a thousand rounds) of .22 bullets so he could hunt dove, quail, and jackrabbits that occupied the area in profusion.

When it came time to leave Baja and return to our home in Eagle Rock, a suburb of Los Angeles, I always sniveled a bit, but then when we’d get home, something fun would always happen. For example, Papa went on a hunting trip to Catalina Island and brought home a baby wild boar and a kid goat. He gave them to our family to raise, and living in a rural area allowed us plenty of room for the two animals in our backyard. After about a year, the goat went back to Papa, where it became a family feast. The pig stayed longer.

I was only four years old, but with little traffic on my street, I was allowed to run free. My dog, an old English setter named Spot, slept most of the time and moved like a sloth, so it was the pig, Piggy Wiggy, who replaced him as my playmate. Mom made my baths a big production, and at times, the pig bathed with me in the laundry tub downstairs.

As PW matured, he became quite protective. Whenever a neighborhood dog approached us, PW bristled, ran after the dog, and chased him home. Not long after that, I was playing in my front yard when Piggy Wiggy attacked the mailman. He never had much use for the man, and on this particular day, after the mailman deposited our mail in the letter slot, PW blindsided him on the back of his legs, and down went the mailman. The pig circled in close, snorting, menacing, and acting very aggressively. The following day, there was a special delivery letter received informing Mom

that something would have to be done about that wild pig.

missing image file

Lee and Piggy Wiggy

Mom told me that he would have to leave our house and live at Papa’s. I had no choice in the matter and figured he was going to a better place to live, but shortly after PW moved to Papa’s house, we were invited over for dinner. Unbeknownst to me, I ate my bath buddy. Papa was careful about the way he served him. He did not present a barbecued pig with an apple in his mouth, sitting on a warmed platter. He merely carved the meat and served it, and we ate it.

After World War II began, the government rationed nearly everything. People could buy a limited supply of groceries and gas with ration stamps, but meat was closely regulated and almost impossible to come by. My parents learned of a home-delivery meat vendor who sold horsemeat for pet food. This meat was government approved, inspected, and reasonably priced. At first, they bought it for our dog, Spot, and my pet alligator, Al, but before long, we were eating the horse meat, as well. This was not a topic for outside conversation. I told one boy down the street about eating it, and he looked at me as though I were a wild animal. Mom was not at all embarrassed about it. Nothing embarrassed her. She simply did not want the word getting out for fear the price would go up.

The horse meat was sold in roasting-size hunks and was very lean. Before Mom cooked it, she cut steaks from the roast and larded each piece by adding kidney suet cut in tiny bits. She inserted the suet in small slits in the meat and broiled it. We ate more meat during the war than before or after. It was hot dogs after the war.

About my alligator, Al. Papa won him at the county fair and made an impressive, two-feet-by-three-feet, handcrafted cage with carrying handles. The only rule I had was that when I was finished playing with the alligator, he had to go back into his cage where he had water. Feeding Al was a real chore. I did not want his teeth sinking into me, so I was careful and used chopsticks when I fed him the raw, cut-up horse meat.

Al measured eighteen inches long when I got him, and he came with a collar and leash, which were a real challenge to put on! After he had thrashed around and snapped at me, I’d take him for walks around the neighborhood. I was the only kid at school who’d ever brought an alligator to class. The principal understood but said, Lee, that was entertaining and nice of you to share your pet with us, but don’t bring it again. I am certain he assumed that position because Al bit Anna Lee Elizabeth Johnson at recess that day.

When Al was over two feet long and still growing, he became more hazardous and harder to handle. Dad took him down to the Los Angeles River and released him. There were plenty of water holes and an abundance of frogs down there—before toxic pollution.

Sometime later, we read in the newspaper that several alligators, which had been won at fairs, had been captured in the river bottom. They were all taken to a popular tourist attraction in Lincoln Heights known as the Los Angeles Alligator Farm. They received qualified care, and my pet Al most likely lived out a long and healthy life there.

Not long after Al went to the farm, I won a yellow duck at the county fair. He thought I was his mother and followed me everywhere. He was not too clever or coordinated, and he peeped like a chicken. Quackaldy stood tall and walked upright—so straight up, in fact, that he appeared to have a stick up his spine.

Mom and Dad were packing the car for our semiannual vacation to Baja, California, where we would camp, fish, and dig for clams. It seemed like a good idea at the time to take my duck along. So along with my new dog, Laddie (Spot had died), Quackaldy was loaded into the car, but his persistent peeping was annoying, even to me. Not much was said about the noise as we traveled down the road to our destination. We were in our 1935 Chevy, so unfortunately, there was no room for the duck in the trunk.

About two hours into the journey, Dad and I had to pee, so he pulled over to the side of the road. We got out, and Laddie and Quackaldy followed.

It is still an unsolved mystery, but somehow the duck got slammed in Dad’s door. Next thing I knew, Mom had put him out of his misery by pulling his head off. Dad got a shovel and buried him near the roadside in a shallow grave.

Alas, Quackaldy missed his chance to run upright through the summer sands and swim in the tide pools of Mexico.

missing image file

Dad, me, Mom, and Laddie—no Quackaldy

On the way back home from our vacation, I brought along two abalone shells. We stopped a moment at Quackaldy’s grave site, and I decorated it with the rainbow-colored seashells from the beach in Baja.

Mom and Dad had met Hank and Lil Saito in the mid 1930s, and the four of them became good friends. The Saitos were of Japanese descent but were American born and owned the Fletcher Florist/Nursery, where most all of the plants and trees for the landscaping of my parents dream home came from. Shortly after the beginning of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decreed that all Japanese born in America could be a threat for espionage and/or sabotage. Therefore, in 1941, over 111,000 Japanese Americans (two-thirds of them American citizens) were forced from their homes, and their children were removed from schools. The families were ordered to pack two suitcases or boxes and leave the rest behind. Their belongings were hung with tags bearing numbers only, no names. Then they were herded onto buses or into government trucks, and they were taken to detention camps.

After standing in lines at the Owens Valley Reception Center (later to become known as the Manzanar War Relocation Center), Hank, Lil, and their family were assigned a confinement area surrounded by fences with five strands of barbed wire and gun towers manned by the military police. Their permanent camp happened to be near the Santa Anita racetrack (horse racing), not very far from our home.

I was young, but I still recall the few occasions we visited Hank, his brother Walt, Lil, and her sister Gracie, who remained prisoners for the duration of the war. The families lived in tar-paper-covered barracks without partitions. There were knotholes in the floors, which made for a cold and dusty environment. Steel army beds with straw-filled mattresses served as their beds. They ate in communal mess halls, bathed in group showers, and shared open-toilet stalls. Privacy was nonexistent.

There were ten Japanese internment camps in California. At the compounds in the desert locations, the temperatures soared to well over one hundred degrees in the summer and fell to near zero on winter nights. The captives grew their own vegetables and raised their own chickens and hogs. The only real comforts they had left in life were the items inside of the two pieces of luggage that they’d been allowed to bring with them when they were taken prisoner.

I remember having trouble in school because they were portrayed as the dirty Japs in the WWII propaganda films we watched in class. They showed fake airplanes flying with pilots sneering, exhibiting their dirty teeth, while shooting down our helpless American GIs. Those were the dirty Japs, but these wonderful people—Hank and Lil Saito and thousands of others like them—were good Americans who spoke perfect English. I had trouble differentiating between the concept of good Japanese and bad Japs. I just thought of the Saitos as being our friends.

In the early days of the Japanese captivity, many of their businesses were looted and/or vandalized by so-called patriotic Americans. But then after a while, African Americans and Native Americans moved into deserted buildings of the Japanese business district—Little Tokyo—and the area became known as Bronzeville. It was a prosperous few years for the contrasting crew that opened bars, cafés, nightclubs, and pool halls. Bookies, streetwalkers, and pimps flooded the area, which made for wild times in the once-serene section of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California.

After the war ended, the 111,000 Japanese who had spent three years confined to the camps were released and given a paltry twenty-five dollars to start their lives over again. Of course, during their incarceration, many of the people had lost their businesses and their homes. Somehow Hank and Lil were among the fortunate ones who had been able to hold on. Other ill-fated Japanese who had lost everything refused to leave the camps. They had nothing to go back to, but the military police at the compounds physically threw these good Americans out onto the streets and closed the compounds.

Chapter 4

9781475936858_txt.pdf

The War Years

In 1943, when my best friend Bobby and I were eight years old, digging forts was one of our favorite pastimes. There was an abundance of vacant lots in the hills where we lived, so we snooped around the neighborhood checking out the other kids’ forts just to see how they compared to ours. We soon realized that ours were not much more than ditches. Ours did not measure up to their first-rate forts. Something had to be done—and fast!

After scrounging around for hoes, picks, and shovels, we worked until we had dug a helluva big hole on the hill above my house. We worked day after day building our secret defense unit. It was going to be the greatest fort ever built! The other kids made theirs so any dummy could tell a fort was dug out there. Ours was going to be completely hidden. It had to be—in case the Germans or Japanese attacked. The inside area was approximately four feet by eight feet. We got some two-feet-by-four-feet pieces of wood and laid them across the hole like rafters. We then covered that with sheet metal that Papa had given us, a trunk lid from an old car, and some tar paper. The mountain of dirt that we’d excavated from the hole was spread over the entire thing. At last, we had our top-secret, camouflaged, underground fortress built. Our next challenge was to dig a tunnel a distance away from the unit. We had to crawl about four feet down at a forty-five-degree angle to get inside, but once we got in, we

could stand up. We hollowed out niches in the dirt walls to set our lights in. Bobby brought some candles, and I had matches. After countless secret meetings and scribbling combat charts on napkins, peace broke out. We lost interest in defeating the enemy, and we abandoned our fort, so our stronghold sat vacant and forgotten under high weeds on the hills where it blended in cleverly with the rest of the countryside for a couple of years.

After the war was over and gas rationing ended, it became common practice for the county to clear vacant land for fire control—probably not the wisest choice for that particular lot. An unsuspecting tractor driver plowed straight over the top of our secret fort, which caved in the roof. This caused the massive piece of equipment to turn over onto its side, spilling a load of diesel fuel down the hill. The tractor driver’s booming profanities echoed through the hills and valleys for what seemed like hours. The turned-over tractor was the talk of the neighborhood. Adults, children, and dogs flocked to the scene. The younger kids yelled, Lee and Bobby are heroes; their fort stopped a tank! Well, we all knew it wasn’t a real tank, and there wasn’t even a German driving it, but (almost) everyone had a good laugh.

Many of my childhood memories were war related, and even our friend Mary was a pilot at Lockheed Aircraft during World War II. When I was around ten years old, Mom told me she was attracted to Mary Wiggins, more than she had been to anyone else before. Mary’s ability to fly airplanes in ways they were not designed to do, along with her beauty and her brains, got Mom’s total attention. During the war, Mary was a squadron leader and ferried bigwigs throughout the world. She was a stuntwoman who performed dangerous feats, such as parachute jumps and dives and falls in the