Highway 71: The Life and Times of Sean Quigley

By Connor Croft

A tongue-in-cheek, bittersweet, dark, comedic drama, Highway 71 describes the life and times of quirky, gay Sean Quigley. His ancestry is briefly sketched, and his childhood finds him intrinsically at odds with the lackluster monotony of his early, rural environment. The story chronicles the demise of a outwardly ideal, yet dysfunctional American family. As Sean's later years are chronicled, the book often resembles a memoir-like collection of short stories. The writing is like a snapshot of the people and places of his era, and his life also functions as a maypole for several adjacent dramas. Highway 71 ventures through alcoholism, anguish, bohemians, cancer, death, dreams, debauchery, grief, perseverance, small town life, senior citizens, surprises, work, and several interesting women, including: a wanton, wealthy, older, alcoholic aunt, a driven, working mother who loses her entire family to death, yet finds a new purpose, and two clever, resourceful, southern women. From a certain angle Highway 71 chronicles over one hundred years in America. Enjoy the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481776592

Connor Croft

Connor Croft was born and raised in the mountainous outback of northern California. He graduated high school as a lifetime member of the California Scholastic Federation, while early interests included drama, floor plans, interior design, and the tenor saxophone. In southern California, he later received a five year bachelor of architecture, with a concentration in urban design. Connor Croft subsequently moved to San Francisco, his home for several decades. In the City by the Bay, he became a self-taught artist, displaying his paintings and architectural arts in half a dozen shows. Additionally, volunteering in various community theater pursuits, he captivated local audiences a handful of times. Mister Croft's resume includes a wide variety of jobs, including office and interior design showroom clerk, color consultant, designer, drafter, educator, and visual merchandiser. He started writing and illustrating a picture book for children (utilizing an alternate pen name) several years ago, and decided to write a novel simultaneously. He eventually became more passionate about the novel, which he proceeded to finish first. Connor Croft has been called many things, while some say the title of Renaissance man suits him best.

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© 2013 by Connor Croft. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogues, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/20/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7658-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-7659-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1

A Birdbath, a Boy, a Family

CHAPTER 2

The Lodge of Broken Promises

& Lost Dreams

CHAPTER 3

Aunt Poon, Lang:

Party of Four, & Suburbia

CHAPTER 4

Acne, Liquor, &

The House of Hers and His

CHAPTER 5

The Lodge of Lost Souls

& Angry Ghosts

CHAPTER 6

White Shorts, Tennis Visor,

Blue Work Shirt

CHAPTER 7

The City of Nine Hills

& A Visitor in Black

CHAPTER 8

The House of the Full Moon

CHAPTER 9

Dr. Cherry, Paging Dr. Cherry

CHAPTER 10

A Later College Collage

CHAPTER 11

A City of Seven Hills,

& A Rookie in Salmon

CHAPTER 12

The Big Snowstorm

& a Chap in Salmon Pants

CHAPTER 13

Sky Blue Polyester

CHAPTER 14

Side by Side

CHAPTER 15

Terry’s New Wagon

CHAPTER 16

La Dolce Vita, Upstairs Room,

& Glass Bell

CHAPTER 17

A Long Walk on a Dirty Carpet

CHAPTER 18

Gemstone Rings &

the Ivory Tower

CHAPTER 19

Broads, Bastards, Bayous, & Blues

CHAPTER 20

Sacramento Senior Serenity

CHAPTER 21

Oh Danny Boy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For Nino, Brian, Eugene, Tomi, Kevin,

and all my families.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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C onnor Croft was born and raised in the mountainous outback of northern California. He graduated high school as a lifetime member of the California Scholastic Federation, while early interests included drama, floor plans, interior design, and the tenor saxophone. In southern California, he later received a five year bachelor of architecture, with a concentration in urban design. Connor Croft subsequently moved to San Francisco, his home for several decades. In the City by the Bay, he became a self-taught artist, displaying his paintings and architectural arts in half a dozen shows. Additionally, volunteering in various community theater pursuits, he captivated local audiences a handful of times. Mister Croft’s resume includes a wide variety of jobs, including office and interior design showroom clerk, color consultant, designer, drafter, educator, and visual merchandiser. He started writing and illustrating a picture book for children (utilizing an alternate pen name) several years ago, and decided to write a novel simultaneously. He eventually became more passionate about the novel, which he proceeded to finish first. Connor Croft has been called many things, while some say the title of renaissance man suits him best.

FOREWORD

A tongue-in-cheek, bittersweet, dark, comedic drama, Highway 71 describes the life and times of quirky, gay Sean Quigley. His ancestry is briefly sketched, and his childhood finds him intrinsically at odds with the lackluster monotony of his early, rural environment. The story recounts the demise of an outwardly ideal American family. As Sean’s later years are chronicled, the book often resembles a memoir-like collection of short stories. The writing is like a snapshot of the people and places of his era, and his life also functions as a maypole for several adjacent dramas. The offbeat story ventures through alcoholism, anguish, bohemians, cancer, death, dreams, debauchery, grief, perseverance, small town life, senior citizens, surprises, work, and several interesting women, including: a wanton, wealthy, older, alcoholic aunt, a driven, working mother who loses her entire family to death, yet finds a new purpose, and two clever, resourceful, southern women. From a certain angle Highway 71 chronicles over one hundred years in America. Enjoy the book.

PREFACE

Y ears passed and I approached middle age. After most of my family deceased, close friends started to pass as well. I became acutely aware of the finite nature of mortality. In fact, I realized my own days could be numbered. Who really knows? Some said I should write a book. I always said I would. I wrote a lot when younger, and some said I had talent. I decided to attempt something like a memoir, and as I toiled, the work became a more loose, often lighthearted, sometimes downright silly, yet frequently tragic, fictitious yarn, woven around the life of Sean, the protagonist, whose life also functions as a maypole for several adjacent dramas.

I was additionally driven to write as my own life had, at times, been reckless. I wanted to make a contribution to humanity, before my ultimate death. Regardless of what happens after death, I figure a literary contribution can only be a good thing, especially if something herein makes things more clear for the next generation(s). And, I feel I was given some talent, and some would say, if one is given talent, it’s important to use it, because it may be all one gets. Also, I wanted to let the world know I was here, and from my vantage point, what had been. But then, I decided, I might as well have some fun with the writing too, and the work became increasingly fictitious. One wouldn’t want a bored reader. I hope you find Highway 71 either amusing or edifying. Maybe the human experience can become this much more clear. Or perhaps you will get a good laugh or two, or a few heartfelt cries. I hope so, and I wish you well.

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CHAPTER

1

A Birdbath, a Boy, a Family

B efore kindergarten Sean Fitzpatrick Quigley remembered three things. First, he recalled grave, dire pain. Hospitalized in the middle of the night, encircled by tubes, metal instruments, and monitors, he remembered vivid, excruciating agony. Second, he remembered playing in front of the television. Suddenly the show was interrupted. Newscasters came on the air and started talking very seriously about something tragic. His mom Margaret walked in front of the television and cried, saying What a horrible tragedy. I just don’t believe it! JFK had just been shot. Third, Sean recalled Disneyland. He remembered the sun shining too brightly, right in his eyes, while riding the tea cup ride. Sean recalled a big, table-like device in the middle, meant for spinning. His dad Nathan was sitting across the cup doing most of the spinning, while very kindly being conversational in a fatherly way. Sean’s next memory was of the birdbath facing Highway 71.

Facing the highway at six, sickly Sean Quigley was just getting over the flu. Dressed in his favorite red and blue striped shirt, with big ears, pretty green eyes, and a mop of reddish-brown hair, he stood by a concave concrete bowl. The indented concrete lump, a construction leftover, graced the foot of the downward sloping front yard. His family called the lump a birdbath, though Sean never saw a bird anywhere near the thing. Standing by the birdbath, he stared through a lightly patterned wire fence, facing weeds, Highway 71, the valley, and big blue mountains. Sean felt he was in the wrong place. Often ailing in the sixties, he watched a lot of television. He fantasized about the Hollywood people coming to take him away, for starring roles, his show business career, and the life he was suppose to be leading. He thought his present circumstances must be a mistake.

The makeshift birdbath became a reminder of a world far away, a world where he belonged, an urban world with style and sparkle, where he could smarty dash around and have fun. Most of his early life Sean’s main concern was how to permanently leave Campton, California, and survive or keep amused until then. Eventually he did leave Campton, population two thousand, in the Cascade mountains of Northern California. His life would witness many turns, tides, and transformations. Backwards we glance.

Sean’s mom’s, Margaret’s, arrival in Campton was predated by the migration of her Grandpa Cloanakilty from Ireland. He moved straight to Oklahoma in the late eighteen hundreds and amassed a homestead through the Oklahoma Land Rush. Then he married a Cherokee woman and children followed. Their youngest son, Marge’s dad Colin, was born in nineteen-hundred. He was very sickly and his parents weren’t sure he would live. Thusly they hastened to actually name him for several years. As a toddler his parents used to regularly tar his fingers, give him a feather, and set him on the floor. Then they’d proceed with their day and duties. Eventually the striking Colin became more healthy, went to school, and started working in the family store. His family’s small, rural, grocery store, near Wister, Oklahoma, was where he later met his future wife Darby.

Darby, an Irish, Scottish, French, and American Indian girl, was born the oldest of eight on a nearby farm. Her early life changed dramatically one unbearably hot, dry, September morning, when she was nine. Just before the harvest, her sturdily lean, weary, pretty yet haggard mother walked outside behind the chicken coop to feed the hogs. Here she swallowed several handfuls of rat poison. They found her dead in a patch of morning glories, blooming in the bog of the hog’s slop ditch. A crumpled, worn, tattered scrap of paper in her dowdy, long, faded, apron’s pocket read:

Sister Sarah

County Clare

Waits at dock

Toys with hair

Waits for a ship

That’s never there

Sister Sarah

County Clare

Darby was left to raise her seven siblings and look after her grumpy, stodgy, bibulous, father, rapidly approaching sixty. As the acting mom she occasionally frequented the grocery ran by the Cloanakilty’s, where she met Colin. They started dating in their late teens. Slender, petite Darby’s supple, light caramel skin ran smoothly over high cheek bones on her delicately pretty face. She usually wore her simple but slightly wavy hair about shoulder length. She and Colin’s world was entirely rural, and their dates might find the two of them dressed up like they were out for a night on the town, only there was no town. Darby was clever and resourceful. Though poor, she sewed herself several chic flapper ensembles. Darby had a genius for creating something out of nothing. She was very skilled as a seamstress, cook, and gardener. Darby and Colin married, moving to Clayton, Oklahoma.

Here they found eventual prosperity running a small sawmill. As the Great Depression loomed and times worsened the Cloanakiltys left for California in the mid thirties. With all their belongings tied to an old, decrepit, side wall truck, the Cloanakiltys and their children departed for California with half a dozen friends and relatives. Darby and Colin had two children, Margaret and Fitzpatrick. As they migrated and arrived in California, the Cloanakiltys lived in blatant poverty, sleeping under bridges and the stars. Living hand to mouth, Darby and Colin did migrant farm work and odd-jobs. Literally working their way through the length of the Central Valley, the Cloanakiltys eventually heard of work in the Cascade mountain range, near a small town named Campton. The family packed and left for Campton. Campton sat in a large valley surrounded by big, beautiful, violet-colored mountains. Darby and Colin found enough work, mostly odd jobs, like sawing wood, cutting Christmas trees for sale, working in mills, and the like. Their first house was made from the boards of a torn-down shack.

As a very young girl in Campton Margaret attended grade school in dresses made from flour sacks. Margaret knew most young girls dressed better and she felt ashamed. Darby made Margaret hearty lunches for school: cooked dough wads covered in syrup. Margaret was ashamed of them. She always hid at lunchtime and ate alone. Eventually Margaret’s family was more prosperous. Margaret made many friends and was happy. She was very pretty, with big green eyes, long curly dark hair, high cheekbones, and a big beautiful smile. In time, Darby and Colin owned a succession of small grocery stores in Campton.

The stores sustained the Cloanakilty’s through the forties and the onset of World War Two. Colin drank a lot. During the war he drank heavily and played cards with the men who supplied his store with rationed goods like butter and milk. He would thereby talk the suppliers into giving him commodities in excess of the quotas. This meant he could sell his customers rationed goods without the use of their limited, coveted, coupons.

As business was booming and warplanes were bombing the Cloanakilty’s son Fitzpatrick enlisted in the navy. Handsome, olive-complected Fitzpatrick, with dark, curly hair, left for duty with good intentions. He got homesick and threatened to desert, while stationed only as far away as Alameda, in the Bay Area of California. Fearing he’d go AWOL the Cloanakiltys packed-up and moved to Alameda where they lived until the end of the war. Darby and Colin worked in the shipyards and Fitzpatrick met his bride, Penny.

The Marshall Plan and the end of World War Two found the Cloanakiltys returning to Campton. Back in Campton Margaret became a cheerleader in high school. After graduation she worked for the phone company as an operator. Fitzpatrick opened his own mechanics shop. He and Penny had a daughter, Darcy. Darby and Colin again established themselves in their grocery store, utilizing a handsome, likeable bookkeeper, Nathan Quigley, from Oklahoma. Margaret noticed Mr. Quigley was worldly and handsome, not unlike Clark Gable. Mr. Quigley dressed smartly, with white button-down shirts, ties, cufflinks, and dapper sports coats. Dashing Nathan drove new, stylish cars.

Nathan’s family was originally from the rural South, where the English, Irish, Scottish, and American Indians often intermarried. Thusly goes the majority of the Quigley bloodline. The Quigleys and their in-laws were generally Baptist or Methodist. Herein was a largely rural agrarian society. Nathan’s people migrated along a trail of farms and homesteads.

Nathan’s grandparents on his father’s side lived in rural Arkansas. The youngest of their eleven children, Steads, Nathan’s dad, was born in eighteen ninety-two. As a young man Steads was tall and handsome, with a casual mop of fair hair and a great smile. While he grew up on a farm, Steads was brainy and charming. At twenty he married a girl he met at a church picnic, Emily, who lived on a nearby homestead.

Emily and Steads actually met just down the road from the Quigley’s Arkansas homestead. Past the thistle heath and the far mead, stood the local Methodist church. Every Fourth of July the church held a three county Methodist pot-luck picnic and talent show. Even Grandma McKintrick and her gang of rabble-rousing Baptists from Polk-County were in attendance. While many were aghast (Baptists!), the Reverend said as long as Grandma McKintrick brought her pot roast dinner, along with her daughter’s specialty, a triple layer salad, the Baptists were perfectly welcome.

At the church’s nineteen twelve picnic, Steads saw a petite, shapely, young gal make her way to the talent show stage in a lightly colored, high collared dress, sporting a wide-brimmed, floppy, floral-print hat. The hat’s brim bounced up and down as she walked. While the woman strolled towards the stage with studied seriousness, something about her revealed intrinsic silliness. Steads was reminded of a schoolgirl struggling to conceal a laugh on her way to a recital. Steads was moved as Emily took her place onstage, singing an awkward, dissonant, frequently changing in key, shrill medley of Rock of Ages, Oh Promise Me, and Red River Valley. Steads wondered how anyone so pretty could actually have such a profoundly horrible voice. Emily and Steads became acquainted after her performance and a short courtship preceded their marriage the same year.

In Arkansas as newlyweds Emily and Steads longed for better times. Steads heard about a job selling insurance in Oklahoma City. Steads managed to get the job and they moved. Steads found his work frequently took him on the road and paid commissions only. Money was scarce and the newly married couple lived in a dumpy little place on the outskirts of town. Emily, if not beautiful, was young and pretty. She wore basic yet presentable high collared dresses and her long hair was usually piled high on her head. Young at heart and relatively carefree, Emily could sometimes be found sitting crisscross atop the weeds of the front yard. She bore twins, Beulah and Nathan, in nineteen fourteen, and several more children followed within ten years.

Nate approached adolescence during the height of the Great Depression. He employed lithe good looks, with light hair, a high forehead and a thin, angular face. Nate and his mom both had a propensity for singing around the house and Nate played the harmonica as well. Steads often insisted, Nate, there’s no doubt about it! You take after your mother musically! Nate had to drop out of high school at fifteen to help support the family, toiling as a bank teller. While Nate had a rheumatic heart condition which later prevented his service in World War Two, he boxed, and won a boxing award called Mr. Golden Gloves in nineteen thirty-four. Also, Methodist Nate sang a lot in church. As a young man he joined various choirs.

In the mid thirties, as a member of a traveling choir, Nate found himself in Los Angeles. Here he deserted the choir and found work, again, as a bank teller, downtown. Nate dressed very well and was gregarious, living in a modest apartment on Robertson Boulevard. Nathan became acquainted with a young blonde gal named Jenny. Nate’s teller booth at the bank faced a plate glass window, and every day, he saw pretty, young, Jenny walking to work. Nate always winked. The two dated and a wedding followed.

In nineteen forty-three, Nathan saw a newspaper clipping for a bank teller position in Campton, California, population two thousand, in the Cascade mountains of Northern California. Nate applied by mail and the bank manager gave Campton a glowing review, noting many residents were from Oklahoma. She also stressed what a paradise Campton was for outdoor life, mentioning beautiful mountains, clean air, and a spacious valley. She asked Nate to send a photo since a personal interview was not practical. In her next correspondence she offered Nate the job, and offered to meet with him at the Sir Drake Hotel in San Francisco to further discuss his position, before his actual arrival to work in a few months.

Shortly thereafter, Nate and Jenny moved to Campton, living in a modernized log cabin off Highway 71, just outside of town and facing Peck’s Valley. In nineteen forty-five their first and only child Jeremy was born. As Jeremy grew to walk Jenny grew closer and closer to walking out of the marriage. Jenny accused Nate of philandering and Nate accused Jenny of a pill habit and impossible mood swings bordering on hysteria. Jenny insisted she needed the pills to stay awake in Campton. Divorce followed, and both wanted to keep Jeremy. Finally the settlement left Jeremy with Nate during the school year, whereas he stayed with Jenny during the summer in Los Angeles.

The divorce agreed with Nate, who loved to idle away time hunting and fishing. He also closely followed the athletic games at the local high school where he became acquainted with the coaches. Nate joined the local Rotary Club and began moonlighting as a bookkeeper for various businesses. He started an accounting firm in the early fifties with two pals, leaving his bank job and opening an office across the street. The Cloanakiltys hired him to manage their grocery store’s books. Nate was attracted to the Cloanakilty’s daughter Margaret. She was pretty and pleasant to talk with. Soon the two dated. Often little Jeremy went on the dates too. Cute Jeremy, with fair-toned, flat-top hair, was often unruly. Nonetheless Nate and Margaret were engaged.

A big church wedding ensued. Margaret wore a gorgeous white dress and her dad gave her away. She was twenty-two, while Nate was thirty-eight. Jeremy was the ring bearer, and threw the ring at the flower girl on his way down the aisle. After the ceremony a snow of rice trailed the happy couple towards their car.

They journeyed to Reno for the honeymoon. Here they stayed at the Mapes, an older, Sinatra-era hotel-casino next to the river, on Virginia Street. Attending a dinner show, Margaret wore a dark, satin, spaghetti-strap evening gown while her curly hair was fashioned upwards in a volumetric fashion. Smiling mischievously with his gray hair crew-cut, Nate was clad in a tweed coat and tie. After their stay in Reno they motored on to San Francisco for the latter half of their honeymoon.

Returning to Campton, the newlyweds and Jeremy resided in Nate’s log cabin, just above Highway 71. They occasionally returned to the Mapes in Reno for overnight stays, often taking Jeremy along. As Jeremy typically sat between Marge and Nate at various restaurants, a waiter once commented, What a lovely couple you make. And is this your son?

That’s his son, Marge snickered. The waiter launched into a description of the veal. Jeremy sat there looking like he’d just let a frog loose under the table.

But overall, dwelling in Campton, Marge and Nate were happy for a long, long time. With beautiful homes and heavily polished furniture, they and theirs led smart lives of barbecues, bridge games, dining out, lovely meals at home, and ice skating in snappy sweaters beneath crisp blue skies. Happy and carefree, Marge was lovely with long curly hair, perfect skin, big green eyes, and beautiful clothes. She had a weakness for wool coats and jackets, with oversized lapels and big buttons. Her moods were light and she gestured a lot with her arms, smiling and cheerful like a young girl. Nate, approaching forty, was dashing, handsome, and dapper. Marge and Nate were often seen around Campton arm in arm as they lovingly walked through life together, buzzing affectionately around each other, animated and alive, young or at least young at heart, their love a beautiful thing. They did not know bad luck. The world belonged to them. Free from misfortune, their Camelot was the envy of many.

More children followed. Within several years they had a daughter Colleen. Two years later another daughter, Clara was born. Once the dark haired, pretty girls were both walking, Marge liked to dress them in frilly white dresses and black, patent-leather Mary Jane’s. Colleen was very dainty while Clara was more loud, curious, and direct. Being younger, Clara was forever trying to catch-up with Colleen. The two never got along, not then, not later.

Right after Colleen started kindergarten, the Quigleys moved into a new, custom, split-level house, built next door to the log cabin. Usually, in split level homes, the tallest side faces the downward slope of the hill. But in the Quigley house, the floor plan was turned ninety degrees, so the main windows faced the valley. Since the house was built on a hill, drainage water would roll down the hill, into the long back face of the house, right down the outside basement stairway, flooding it at least twice a year. The attractive modern house had a carport on one side and a low pitch gable roof of gray gravel. The siding was of white fiber-cement tiles while the trim was forest green. The log cabin next door was sold to a frumpy, frequently plaid-clad, retired couple who dwelt there now and then. The upstairs Quigley bedroom windows overlooked their cluttered, messy driveway, where the visiting duo were often seen sitting aimlessly in yard chairs.

Next door however, the new Quigley house had lovely yards. Margaret and Nate’s front yard housed irises and roses. A large bush of white carnations graced the bottom yard corner adjacent to the driveway. Shrubs covered with blue-violet berries lined the domicile’s front. A large, dangling plum tree grew on the far side of the carport, while an unhealthy, scraggly, persimmon tree kept guard by the front stoop. In the back yard, planter boxes made of big timbers separated the downward sloping yard from the house-adjacent patio. A six foot tall, forest green, wood fence enclosed the area, beyond which the hill sloped upwards, forming a small meadow that stood before a forest of tall, dark pines.

It was a neat place, and the inside was attractive as well. The furniture was mostly maple: end tables, dining table, hutch, piano, and telephone bench. Marge selected a decorative art painting for the living room, a Dutch-school scene of a grandpa and granddaughter out in a rowboat on a foggy sea. The living room walls were golden yellow. Carpeting was high-low in darker shades of blue and green. The drapery valence and side panels were done in a sage green and cream print. The moving drapery panels were lined, cream colored chenille. The drapes framed a long picture window, running the length of the living room. The view faced Highway 71, the sawmill lumberyard, and the valley below, surrounded by violet-colored, tall mountains.

In one corner of the living room, the front door and a small entry area was demarcated by a decorative screen of plastic ornate swirls in cream and gold. The cream color continued into the kitchen, where papered walls in cream and beige-toned pastels displayed a spice bottle motif. The kitchen utilized white metal cabinets and a large, beige, corner booth, with a kidney-shaped, moveable table. The kitchen also hosted a planter box window, while another big window faced the back yard and forest beyond. All in all, the house represented a nice effort for a small town girl and a choir deserter.

The furnishings came from Bruener’s in Reno. Margaret and the Bruener’s outside sales representative selected everything. At first Nate didn’t like the furnishings. He said, I can’t believe what you and that ‘poofter’ from Bruener’s have done to this house. That fireplace mantel glass looks like circus glass. This place looks like a carnival! The colors are too much. I am mortified!

Yet later, Nate and Margaret hosted a Rotary Club pot-luck dinner. Local Rotary men and their wives crowded the new home. All raved and raved about the beautiful residence. Nate said, Yes, Margaret and I just put together a few things we really liked. The house is a joint effort. We tried our best to do a nice job and we’re glad you’re pleased. It was nothing, really, we just put together a few things that especially caught our eye.

So began Quigley life in Campton. Soon Colleen was five and attending kindergarten. Clara got angry because she couldn’t go. Mornings, Clara would watch Captain Tickle’s Schoolhouse on television. She complained because she didn’t have anyone to ride with when the kids on television rode stick horses gleefully. Margaret intervened, procuring two stick horses, and the two of them rode around the living room every morning for a year.

As if Marge wasn’t busy enough she got pregnant again. By the end of Colleen’s kindergarten school term Marge was approaching term herself. Despite her multitudinous responsibilities she grew a row of treasured rosebushes. The roses were doing particularly well, and samples from the aisle of yellow Harrisons were about to be entered into the rose competition at the County Fair in Yorcrest. But one Saturday morning Marge awoke and opened the living room drapes to view a curving yellow path covering the length of the front lawn. The girls had plucked the rosebushes bare. Clara and Colleen pranced down the yellow path. Margaret stomped out the front door. Colleen waved and shouted, Mom, Me and Clara are playing Wizard of Oz!

Clara, crawling on her hands and feet, down the gloriously yellow path, cried, And I’m Toto!

While the County Fair was out, Margaret was in the delivery room in September of nineteen-sixty, giving birth to a big, loud, baby boy, Sean Fitzpatrick Quigley. As a small child he was very sickly. Multiple allergies and asthma led to one illness after another. He survived several bouts of simultaneous asthma and pneumonia. While once hospitalized with pneumonia, he was placed in a plastic tent, and a litany of artificial apparatuses kept him alive. One evening it was clear he might die any time. Margaret asked the elderly Dr. Mason to somehow intervene. He said, Margaret, what more can I do?

Marge prayed a lot that night, vowing to somehow, someday give back to the field of medicine should Sean live. Marge was the only one who could stand to be in his room that night. Everyone else was hysterical, and Dr. Mason wanted Sean calm. At one point Sean literally turned purple and stopped breathing. Somehow, for some reason, breath returned, and he lived through the night. In the morning, he stuck his hand out of the plastic oxygen tent and said, Mom, hold my hand.

So Sean survived. During numerous overnight hospital visits he liked to take the skin on Marge’s forearms and twist it back and forth. He was amused by the ridges of skin twisting and moving. During one hospital stay Marge asked Dr. Mason if he thought Sean was well enough to receive a spanking. Dr. Mason said, Well now Marge, I don’t think you’d want to shock the boy, you have never struck him. Why would you want to start now?

Generally Sean’s health improved after the first grade. He grew to look more plump and healthy overall, giggling often and sporting a big mop of reddish-brown hair. Though particularly sensitive and prone to tears, in school he was bright and got good grades. While never athletic like his buddy Julian, Sean appeared to be, overall, a happy kid. His future seemed promising, and his parents steered him towards the eventuality of college.

His interests included a set of American Building Bricks, originally intended as a birthday present for Julian (Sean had a bout of illness and begged the blocks off his folks). He liked to build replicas of the houses he saw on television. His preferred house came from a melodramatic soap opera, Dark Shadows. Likewise, he decorated his bedroom in a Dark Shadows fashion, buying replicas of famous paintings from centuries ago, in white, ornate, plastic frames. Around this time, Sean started drawing floor plans of the brick houses he would then build.

Sean’s early amusements and memories included visits from his dad’s parents. Indeed the Quigleys from Oklahoma City visited once or twice a year. The visiting Quigleys were called Big Momma and Big Daddy. Jeremy had coined the names and they stuck, though Big Momma was scarcely five foot three and mild of disposition, and Big Daddy, while tall, was thin and frequently clad in office attire and a cardigan sweater. The Quigleys typically jetted to either Reno or Sacramento, and the California Quigleys would drive them back to Campton.

Big Momma always wore dark, mesh-like hair nets, covered with tiny, colored beads. She was demure and feminine, and liked to save empty tin cans to use as cookie cutters. The empty cans always grated on Marge’s nerves, as clearly no one in the world could possibly need that many cookie cutters. Big Daddy liked to go on long walks. And he was also famous for topping just about any pie with a hearty pat of butter. He insisted, It’s for extra richness! Big Momma and Big Daddy always traveled with a small suitcase of over-the-counter medicines, covering ailments such as arthritis, athlete’s foot, blisters, constipation, coughs, diarrhea, headaches, nausea, sore throats, stiff joints, stuffy heads, and warts. Nightly, before bed, both of them each would usually suffer at least three of the aforementioned, but no worries! Medicine was at hand!

Then, as years drifted by, towards the late sixties Marge grew into a sizable gal. Motherhood and cigarettes had taken a toll on her face, and she always had puffy circles under her eyes. But she dressed beautifully in a sixties mode and her auburn hair was always worn meticulously up. At night, she frequently wore a silk, jade green, chinoiserie robe. Marge was an avid reader, and read a lot to the kids as well. Marge and Sean’s favorite book was Winnie the Pooh.

For his part, Nathan was more the type to read the newspaper and an occasional magazine. And on weekends, clad in brightly colored plaid polyester pants and a matching knit shirt, he loved to golf. Sunbathing was another past time. Between his outdoor hobbies, Midwestern past, smoking unfiltered Camels, raising four kids, and mortgage payments, he aged fast. His skin was quite leathery, and his jowly face always looked puffy and deeply lined. Completely gray by forty-five with a pot belly, he looked more liked a grandpa than a father. Yet he usually dressed well in business slacks and white button-down shirts. He almost never removed his black, horn-rimmed glasses.

But somehow as time passed, Marge and Nate grew apart. No one recalled when or why, but a day came when they were distant. Likewise, they grew less and less physically affectionate. Nate came home from work later and later. Marge’s face began to take-on the look of a deer in the road, dead center in front of a moving car, not knowing quite what to do, but vaguely aware of doom.

But the Quigley kids were growing and changing, and Quigley life was still generally good. Clara and Colleen were turning into pretty young women with dark hair and green eyes. Clara, her skin more olive, was plump. Colleen eventually had a great, if petite, figure. Both employed the poker-straight hairstyle prevalent in the late sixties and early seventies. Colleen dressed in snappy, colorful, skirt and blouse ensembles and fetching short dresses. Clara wore nice things too, while her tastes were less conventional, and included cut-offs, camouflage wear, and hiking boots. In time she even let her underarm and leg hair grow!

But generally the Quigleys were a presentable lot, although Nate was no vision of decorum first thing in the morning. When he awoke he’d walk downstairs to the picture window in his undershorts, scratch his posterior, and cough. Then he went to the bathroom for a half an hour. There he’d smoke at the bathroom sink while shaving, leaving a daily tar stain on the drab green porcelain. Then he’d don a white button-down shirt, slacks, his horn-rimmed glasses, and a narrow tie. Thusly attired Nate would plod to the kitchen booth, newspaper in hand. As Marge faithfully served breakfast he’d silently read the paper. After breakfast he usually drove one or more Quigleys to school in the Pontiac station wagon.

The Quigleys also had a Jeep station wagon. The cargo compartment was filled with a dirty pile of hunting and fishing supplies, including plastic duck decoys. These outdoorsy accessories remained untouched in the back of the Jeep for over a decade, collecting dust: stage props to a vanishing life. Now and then Nate and Sean did use the Jeep to hunt or fish. Hunting meant getting up about four a.m. After dressing, Sean and his dad would haul a lunch-filled ice chest to the Jeep, and drive out through