D’Orsay’S Story

By D'Orsay Logan

Though her beginnings were no more glamorous than most, author DOrsay Logan accomplished some amazing things throughout her lifefrom raising seven accomplished children to seeing the world. In DOrsays Story, she tells about the events that shaped who she has become.

Filled with intimate details, this memoir starts with her birth in April of 1950 and includes accounts of growing up with her brothers and sisters, being brutally assaulted at age thirteen, getting married at sixteen while still a senior in high school, becoming a jockey in her early twenties, earning a nursing degree in her forties, and overcoming an addiction to alcohol. DOrsay also shares stories of worldwide travels, during which she learned to skydive, swam in Loch Ness, stood in front of Stonehenge, and lived in African jungles.

DOrsay narrates a wide range of experiences from her lifethe good, the bad, the sad, and the exhilarating. Intriguing and inspiring, DOrsays Story communicates the message that life presents opportunities to overcome hardships and anything is possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480801936

D'Orsay Logan

D’Orsay Logan, the mother of seven children, became a registered nurse and a jockey. Throughout her life, she climbed the pyramids, galloped Arabian stallions across the Sahara Desert, skydived, flew a plane, spent a month in the African jungles living in a tent, and lived for a month in Egypt. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Childhood years and poison

I WAS TWO YEARS OLD the first time I was poisoned. It was arsenic, in a small round red tin. My mother had placed cans in each corner of the kitchen to kill the ants that we always had a problem with. I was watching everything she was doing; one of the cans near the back door had spilled some green powder out of it so I toddled over to see what it was. I took a pinch of the powder and placed it in my mouth, it had a very pleasant taste, like powdered almonds, so I continued to eat it. My mother glanced over to see what I was doing just as I tipped the last of the powder into my mouth. She stood there for a few seconds before realizing what she was seeing then started screaming. She ran to me and picked me up, her face was white and she looked terrified as she ran to the car to take me to a hospital. I don’t remember what happened after she picked me up for which I am very grateful, I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant. I never asked her what the doctors did to get the arsenic out of me, I didn’t want to know. She did tell me I didn’t die, my heart kept beating and I didn’t stop breathing. The second time I was poisoned I did die.

After seeing how much I had upset my mother I never again went to her with the many, many injuries I had during my life. I always went to my older sister for repairs when I got hurt, unless I could fix the injury myself. I didn’t want my mother to get upset anymore after that first time. My two sisters and brother were married and moved out by the time I was two and had children of their own. I am thankful that my oldest sister Donna lived in an apartment building my dad had built right behind our house. Donna had a baby boy, Eddie, who was a year younger than me, he became my best friend.

I was the only child left in the house. I was lonely with no one to play with so I would spend a lot of time in the attic, where my dad had enclosed a section at the end with two bedrooms. The room on the right was my bedroom. The other was my dad’s and his first wife’s room. The walls and ceiling of my bedroom were made of a material resembling compressed cardboard, the walls were not painted and the cardboard material was a rust colored brown. The rest of the attic was not finished, just the bare beams where there and when it rained I could hear the drops hitting the roof so clearly, I loved it. I would just sit in my Grandmother Logan’s old wicker rocker and listen to it.

Grandma Logan died two years before I was born but I felt like I knew her because her picture hung on the outside wall of my room. It was the type of picture that gave the impression that her eyes were following you. I always imagined she was watching out for me and there were a lot of times when I had a bad dream I would go out into the attic, get in the rocker with my blanket and the rocker would start to rock by itself. It never occurred to me that the rocker should not be rocking by itself, I just accepted it and thought Grandma Logan was rocking me. Then I would fall back to sleep content in the knowledge that I was safe. My dad had carved designs into the walls of my room with some kind of tool, the designs were so intricate. It must have taken him a lot of time to do it. I loved all those designs because my dad had put them there and I worshiped my dad. My room was heated by an old radiator in the corner of the room and when the heat came up it would make rattling sounds that to me were soothing, I would fall asleep listening to it.

Every night my dad would carry me up to bed and read me a story, usually about horses but now and then a fairy tale. One night he read me the story of Sleeping Beauty, I did not like the part about the spinning wheel at all, it scared me a lot. I didn’t tell him this though; I didn’t want him to know I was afraid of anything. I have mentioned that my dad carved designs in the walls of my room; he also carved one wall outside of my room, and on it was a large wheel that looked just like the one in the story. It took me a while to get to sleep that night and then I dreamed about the spinning wheel. My dreams were always in color, so as I watched, the carved wheel came off the wall and started to roll toward me. It turned a blood red. The wheel was dripping with a thick bloody substance as it came at me splattering large drops of bright red blood on everything. As it touched the end of my bed I woke up shrieking at the top of my lungs and sweeping my hands back and forth in front of me. The next thing I knew my dad was holding me in his arms and rocking me, telling me it was just a bad dream. Fairy Tales; I don’t know why they are called that, most of them are horror stories.

I isolated myself in that room and the attic and invented ways to entertain myself, looking at the pictures in old books and making up stories to go with them. I loved music and would listen to my mother’s records on an old record player and try to sing along. Those first few years seemed to drag by, I was so lonely, always looking out the window wishing I could go outside and explore and find someone to play with, but I was still too young. I decided when I was five years old that when I grew up I would have twelve children, I would have someone to play with then. I also swore that I would never forget what it was like to be a child; I call it the Peter Pan Syndrome. When I finished doing that I would become a nurse.

I told my dad about this plan, looking straight at his face so I could see his eyes, I always looked at a person’s eyes, and they really are a window to the soul. After I finished telling him my plan he just smiled and his eyes sparkled, the expression on his face was somehow sad but also proud that a five year old would even be thinking about the future. He looked at me lovingly and all he said was, experience is the best teacher. I never forgot what he said, he was right about the experience part, but I never forgot what it was like to be a child either. Whenever one of my children did something an adult wouldn’t approve of I’d think back to my own childhood and then decide what to do about the problem. I listened to a lot of not need to know information.

When I was four years old we got our first television set, I’d sit on my dad’s lap and watch the boxing matches. I was only four years old but my dad would point out the different moves the boxers made, how they ducked, dodged, and blocked the punches. I wonder now why he taught me to fight; maybe somehow he knew that I would need to know this. I learned a lot more when I got older about fighting from first-hand experience; I became a street fighter and always won. I was not a bully; I only fought if I had to.

My favorite program was about a collie dog named Lassie, I loved all animals but after seeing Lassie I knew I would have a collie dog someday. Twelve years later my husband to be bought me my collie dog, I named her Lassie, and she had six litters of pups born in my kitchen.

When I was four years old my mother would take me outside in our backyard while she hung clothes on the line. My sister would bring Eddie out too and we would ride our tricycles up and down the sidewalk. Then when we were alone I would discuss all the things we could do if our mothers weren’t there, like climbing the fifty foot weeping willow tree, or the five foot wall that encircled our yard. My dad built this wall, it was made of cinder block with a cement cap on the top that had stones implanted in it at different angles to discourage anyone from climbing over it. I think that was the reason I wanted to climb it so much, because it was dangerous. I didn’t want to climb over it; I wanted to climb along the top, straight down the wall over the stones. Eddie and I eventually did climb the length of that wall on both sides of the yard; we did get caught the first few times by my sister, mother or the neighbors. We solved the problem by posting lookouts for {THE ENEMY} this didn’t always work but we did climb the wall a lot. I don’t know why but we never did get hurt. I did learn years later how my mother felt when my own children started to climb the wall over the rocks from one end to the other.

That first summer when I was four I did get a lot of scraps and cuts, my mother learned I was a tomboy and was not happy with the fact. She decided I was very smart and could start kindergarten in September, so she had {a friend} forge my birth certificate to make me five years old instead of four. I started school a year early, which worked out very well for me in the end. It seems to me now that it was planned this way by someone, somewhere. I had to graduate early it was in the plan.

Kindergarten in nineteen fifty four was mostly playing in the sandbox but I did learn my ABCs and how to spell my name. The school was only a block from my house; it was a two storied building with oiled wood floors and was painted red on the outside. There were only five to eight children in a class, the teachers were all nice and enjoyed their jobs. My experience with my children’s teachers was an ongoing battle that I would fight until I won. I’m not saying this was a fun thing to do, just that I did it.

The summer I turned five I had a little more freedom outside, so Eddie and I started to collect friends, all the misfits no one else would play with. Every one of them were boys, none of the girls would come anywhere near me. They nicknamed me {The Witch of Warren Street}, I guess because my hair was always flying loose and usually filled with picker burrs or bubble gum that Eddie had threw in it. I was a daredevil, that was not ladylike and my face was usually covered with coal dust from the many dumps we slid down on homemade sleds {cardboard boxes]. Another one of my great ideas; we would sit on top of the mountain of coal on pieces of cardboard boxes bent back towards you and someone would give you a hard shove to get you started. I discovered that you had to be sitting in the middle of the box just right or you would fall off and roll down the mountain, which was also fun but then you would be covered in so much coal dust that all you could see was the whites of your eyes. My mom did not appreciate me coming home in this condition, not only because I was dirty but she knew I got this way doing something dangerous.

The first friend to join Eddie and me was a boy named Pat Cunningham. He lived with his dad and three Aunts, his mother had died when he was very young. He loved bird watching and had a book with all different kinds of birds in it that he would try to find and identify. He was persecuted by all the other kids in the neighborhood because he didn’t have a mother and his dad drank a lot. I liked his dad; he was always kind to us and never did anything to hurt anyone, even when he was drunk. I thought he was even nicer when he drank {only on the weekends} then he would give us all money to go and buy candy. Pat became the first of a number of misfits that made up our gang. I’m still in touch with him, every Christmas we send each other a card. When he grew up he took care of every one of his Aunt’s, refused to put them in a nursing home and the last one gave him the house in her will. Her son found the will, destroyed it and took the house when she died and told Pat to leave. He lives alone now in a cheap housing project and the house he was supposed to inherit is falling apart.

Eddie and I were at the playground a couple of blocks from our house when we met the second member to join the gang. His name was George Sherbinko, he lived with his Grandmother who I thought was one of the meanest people I ever met. George stuttered a lot, especially when he became upset so all the kids made fun of him too. Once he joined the gang he was under my protection and anyone making fun of him got a punch in the mouth from me. He had a terrible life with his Grandmother; she beat him at least three times a week and made fun of his stuttering herself. His mom and dad had died so he had no choice, he had to live with her or go to an orphan’s home. He never talked about it but we all could see the bruises and black eyes he got. George’s life never did get better, only worse as time went on. He married one of my best friends; they had a son but got separated soon after. I still think of George every day, I believe he was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s now serving life and fifteen years.

We met our next member at that same playground, he was getting beat up at the time, I stepped in and the fight was over quickly, his name was Dave King. After he joined my gang he stopped getting beat up, the other kids in the neighborhood knew enough about me so they left him alone. Dave was always telling not very funny jokes and he never got any better at it. His dad had died too and his mother had to work all the time as a nurse to support them, so he was on his own a lot. His mother was a good friend of my sister Donna, it was his mother she called when I was seventeen, sitting in my apartment at the kitchen table in catatonic shock.

The last member to join was a girl named Rose Kolatis, she supplied all the junk food for the gang. She stayed my friend for her entire life and became my only daughter’s godmother.

It has occurred to me that our gang of misfits sounds a lot like the group of kids in the Stephen King book IT. The only kind of monsters we encountered were human, at least we didn’t have to kill any giant spiders.

I did have one girlfriend, Carol Ann, who was wheelchair bound due to polio, she was so beautiful with long black hair, fair skin and big brown eyes with long curled lashes. Her affliction, in my opinion was the most horrible thing that could happen to anyone, I kept asking my mother why GOD would let something like this happen to this sweet, beautiful little girl. My mother’s answer was, God works in mysterious ways. I didn’t agree. I don’t know why but the degree of her polio was the worst kind, she could not use her hands, they were claw shaped and she had a very difficult time talking, I was used to it so I understood her. Her mom had to strap her in the wheelchair and tie her hands to the arms of the chair so she would not fall over, she was totally helpless. I would go to see her every day I could, her grandparents lived a block from my house so when she came to visit them I would spend the day with her. We played board games; I would move the pieces for her and let her win a lot so it would make her happy.

I remember she would sit in that chair and cry because she couldn’t do the things other children did. I did everything I could to make her life happy and to make her laugh but when I left I would cry all the way home, praying to GOD to please fix it so she could get better. My mom was very religious and was always taking me to tent meetings, Oral Roberts or Billy Graham usually, so my mom decided to try taking her to see them to get healed. I know dear readers that you can see what’s coming, we did take her and she did not get healed. That was the end of my belief in the healing powers of anyone. I can’t imagine the disappointment and despair she felt, I’m sure her parents and family was not happy either.

There is a happy ending to this story. When she grew up she went to college for classes in computer technology and graduated as valedictorian of the class. She also had a baby girl who was born perfect with no afflictions; she loved that little girl so much, I was very glad that she found happiness. Her parents, who were two of the most kindhearted people I ever met, set up an office in their home that Carol Ann could work out of. She never gave up, never let her terrible disease stop her, she now makes eighty thousand dollars a year and supports herself and family.

I did get to climb the fifty foot weeping willow tree that year, I tested the lower branches to make sure they would support my weight and had my Nephew Eddie stand lookout for my mom or sister. I got as high as my sister’s parlor window on the third floor of the apartment building and settled in between two branches, I felt like I was on top of the world. That’s when my sister looked out her parlor window and seen me staring her right in the face, I waved to her and that’s when she started to scream again. She opened the window and told me to get down from the tree but to be very careful and watch were I was stepping so I wouldn’t fall. When she seen that I was down safely she called my mom and then I got spanked and told never to climb the tree again. I did climb the tree again many times but first I made sure that my mom and sister were gone out somewhere.

I taught Eddie and all the gang to climb that tree too. Nobody ever got hurt but I was to learn how my mom and sister felt {my own children climbed the tree} terrified for our safety, if we ever fell it would have killed us.

Whenever I had a nightmare I always went out in the attic and got in my Grandma Logan’s rocking chair, she died two years before I was born but her picture was on the wall of my bedroom and I always thought she had kindness in her eyes. I would get in the chair with my blanket wrapped around me and it would start to rock on its own. I thought this was perfectly normal, so I would fall peacefully back to sleep until morning. None of my children believed this story until they seen it rock by itself, and then they started screaming as they ran away. They would never sit in that rocker again.

CHAPTER TWO

Dangerous Games and Injuries

SINCE I WAS LEADER OF the gang it was my responsibility to come up with ideas to have fun without being killed. All the ideas I came up with I would always be first to try to make sure they were safe enough for the rest of the gang. I found a place in the woods that had a big section filled with beautiful white birch trees with huge rocks around for us to sit on. There were a lot of small caves in the area too for us to explore. I loved to play cowboys and Indians {the Indians always won when I played} or prehistoric cavemen {the caves helped a lot with this game} but one day I noticed a creek down below the usual area we played in. We went on an exploration trip to find out if there was anything interesting to do there, Oh there was. There was a huge pipe going from one side of the creek to the opposite side about fifteen feet above the water, it would be a great idea to try walking over the pipe to get across the creek. We could have crossed from on the ground but what was the fun in that.

I went first with both arms stretched out to keep my balance, I did not look down. My dad gave me a good piece of advice when I was younger and on the roof of a building with him he said to pretend I was on the ground when I was up on a high place and to never look down, then I wouldn’t get dizzy or scared. I never forgot what he said and it’s saved my life many times. I did forget once when I was on the top of one of the pyramids in Egypt but I was fifty five then. I made it to the other side without any trouble at all and then waved for the next in line to come across. Nobody moved so I thought maybe they didn’t hear me, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled as loud as I could to come over. Eddie started to walk the pipe first, he was a little shaky so I told him to put his arms out to balance and don’t look down just look straight at me. Eddie made it across {now when I think back, he probably did it to avoid a beating from me} fine so the rest of the gang came across doing exactly what Eddie did. The only thing on the other side was a junkyard full of old cars, the gang wanted to go exploring in it but I said no that place is creepy, if I said it was creepy they knew it was. They never asked again to go there and I’m glad we didn’t, I found out years later that the place was full of rattlesnakes, big rattlesnakes.

Another place we liked to hang out was the local garbage dump and we could make a lot of money there loading old rotted food into the dumpsters for the pig farmers. One loaded truck would pay as high as fifty cents and that was considered big bucks in 1957. That’s when there were still corner grocery stores and penny candy. My nephew Eddie and I smelled really bad after loading one of those trucks so we would try to clean ourselves up before our mothers found out. They would not like the idea of us working in the dump which had a large community of very big rats living there and I bet all the rats was carrying some kind of disease to pass on to us. We never did get sick from working in the dump and it also was a good place to practice target shooting with my slingshot. Eddie actually killed one of the rats once and brought it home to show his mom. She did not appreciate it.

The day we discovered the stream with the pipe over it George was not with us but about a week later he came with us to see the stream and pipe. It had rained all week and the stream had now become a raging river but when George seen the pipe he refused to cross over it. He was afraid of heights so he decided to cross the river from ground level. I tried to tell him this idea was a very bad one but he wouldn’t listen. George started across the stream at a spot he thought was safe, the rest of the gang stood on top of the hill leading down to the stream. He waded into the water and tried stepping on the first rock he came to, the rock was covered with slime so he slipped and fell into the stream screaming as he was being washed downstream. I was the leader of the gang so it was my responsibility to save him. I proceeded to do this very quickly because he was pretty far past the pipe and really starting to pick up speed. I got to him before he drowned and pulled him to shore, we were both soaking wet so we had to all go to Pat’s basement to dry off and clean up. George never did get up the courage to cross the pipe but I did teach him how to cross a stream without falling in by looking first to see which rocks were safe to step on and never try to cross when to water was high. I still think of George every day and say a prayer for him, he got blamed for starting a fire that killed an old man and is now serving life and fifteen years in prison. I’ll never believe he started that fire.

I have always loved a challenge, there was one particular tree behind the apartment building that I wanted to climb but the lowest branches were too high for me to reach. I sat staring at that tree trying to come up with a plan to climb it. I suddenly remembered how the men climbing the telephone poles did it; they used pieces of metal stuck into the pole to climb on. I went to the garage where my dad had some very long nails and nailed them into the tree. At the bottom of the tree there was a pile of old radiators and boards with rusty nails in them so if I fell I would land on them and probably kill myself so I made sure the nails in the tree were nailed in far. I climbed up the nails and grabbed the first branch of the tree which instantly broke off in my hand. I had a billionth of a second to decide what to do, either fall on the radiators and boards filled with nails or wrap my arms around the tree and slide down over the nails I had put in the tree.

The nails were sticking out of the tree about three inches, still I chose door number two. I wrapped my arms around that tree and by the time I got to the bottom I was cut and dug up from my chest to my ankles but by some miracle not impaled. My clothes were ripped to shreds and I was covered in blood, I didn’t hurt a lot so I knew the injuries couldn’t be too bad. I decided I could trust my sister with this injury, so up the stairs to her apartment I went. When she seen me she stayed very calm, carefully cleaned the wounds up and bandaged them, then sent me on my way hoping she would not see me again that day. She didn’t that day but two days later I came limping into her house with a crushed left big toe. I acquired this injury by trying to carry a large cinder block to the edge of the building. I made it about two feet before dropping it on my left toe; it was a heavy block so my toe looked almost flat when she took my sock and shoe off. She cleaned off the blood and bandaged it and sent me out the door.

In the winter months Eddie and I went sleigh riding, kids could still do that then without getting arrested for one reason or another. Our favorite spot was a hill a few blocks from our house. We liked it because it had a big bump at the bottom and if you hit it just right you could go airborne for a while. My nephew and I were there one day and we were having so much fun we lost track of the time, we didn’t notice it was getting dark. I was so cold and tired that I thought it would be nice to just lie down for a while before going home. I picked a big fluffy mound of snow, laid down in it and went to sleep. Eddie kept trying to get me up to go home and I just kept slapping at him because I was finally comfortable. He gave up trying to get me to walk and rolled me onto a sled then dragged me home. I didn’t know it then but if he wasn’t there I would have