Life on Its Own Terms: A Memoir of a Woman’S Buoyant Spirit Through Heartbreaks and Back

By Lee Littenberg

An exciting, uplifting memoir about one womans resilience and enthusiasm for life from birth to 78 years which, by example, shows life need not end after tragedy. In a succinct, down to earth, confidential manner, Lee shares:

Alabama farm life in the 1930s including pulling a litter of pigs out of mama pig at age five.
The heartbreak of love lost.
The creative excitement of being a professional ballroom dancer/model.
The pleasure of being Bobby Darins lover.
The intrigue of traveling Europe with a man sought by the FBI.
The passion of breeding top working dogs and training them through Schutzhund.
The honor of co-authoring a successful book on Min Pin dogs and finishing her own champions.
The survival of several near death experiences like piloting her Cessna plane into a spin toward the ocean, rolling a pickup three times and having her heart stop for 10 minutes after surgery.
The pain of losing one husband in a car accident, another to diabetes and a third one when she threw him out.
The grace of finding solace and healing through her art.
The joy of returning to ballroom dancing at age 76 and finding love with a friend from 50 years earlier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491724903

Lee Littenberg

Lee Littenberg is currently an artist and ballroom dance instructor whose remarkable story reveals a talent for moving over and under, around and through, her life’s many challenges. Lee, at 78, continues to dance with life, showing courage in times of trouble, passion in relationships and a generous engagement with each new possibility. www.artistinthecountry.com

Book preview

Life on its

Own Terms

A memoir of a woman’s buoyant spirit

through heartbreaks and back

By Lee Littenberg

Front Cover Photo:

I made this 3x5 foot acrylic painting on Plexiglas and called it Estuary. It was made to hang in a window. When I displayed it at an art show a woman came and sat in front of it for maybe thirty minutes without saying a word. She finally said, I don’t care how much you want for this painting, I’ll take it; that is the first peaceful moment I have had in a long time." Artist, Lee Littenberg

www.artistinthecountry.com

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

Life on its Own Terms

A memoir of a woman’s buoyant spirit through heartbreaks and back

Copyright © 2014 Lee Littenberg.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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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.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2489-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2490-3 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 02/20/2014

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1   First Impressions

Chapter 2   Lessons in Independence

Chapter 3   First Love

Chapter 4   He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not

Chapter 5   Dancing Forward

Chapter 6   Modeling and Disaster

Chapter 7   Nights with Bobby Darin

Chapter 8   Seduced by Romeo

Chapter 9   Freedom to Fly

Chapter 10   Catskills to Long Beach

Chapter 11   To Europe First Class

Chapter 12   Intrigue over Ships

Chapter 13   The FBI and Me

Chapter 14   Fashion and Celebrities

Chapter 15   Health and House Calls

Chapter 16   Real Estate Highs and Lows

Chapter 17   Going Back Home Again

Chapter 18   Schutzhund Training

Chapter 19   Tracking Ancestors

Chapter 20   Culture Shock in Alabama

Chapter 21   Scary Small Town Politics

Chapter 22   Dr. Buris Boshell

Chapter 23   College and Art

Chapter 24   Cougar

Chapter 25   Rolling the Pickup

Chapter 26   The End of an Era

Chapter 27   Not My Time to Go

Chapter 28   Dancing My Health Back

Chapter 29   Believe in Miracles

Preface

My decision to finally get down to writing this book was difficult. I have made many bad choices and I have done many things I am not particularly proud of. I am not recommending that anyone of any age do what I have done; if I were a cat I would have used up five of my nine lives. Still, these are the decisions I made with the information and experience I had at the time and I learned lessons that were worth the price. I am also proud of many things I have done. I make no apologies.

Through example, I wish to let readers see that a happy and successful life is possible after whatever tragedy comes their way. I hope anyone who reads this will find the courage to do something with their own life that is satisfying and makes them happy. One of my life lessons is that being happy is a decision we make deliberately! Another thing I am convinced of is that everything changes with time. One of my recommendations for dealing with situations out of our control or with depression or unhappiness of any kind is to stay so busy you don’t have time to think about it; Scarlet O’Hara’s, I’ll think about it tomorrow. (Of course Scarlet was also doing the next most obvious thing that occurred to her.)

Trying to think back and figure out what motivated me to do the things I did, I think it was passion—passion for life, learning, love and just seeing what is around the corner. What is the next experience I have not had before? My latest passion is square dancing.

My life may not have been the way I would have planned it, if I had planned it, but at the age of 78, I can tell you that overall my life was, and still is, exciting and fun!! I want to thank my family for encouraging me to write this book, especially my sister Lera Jane Chacon who spent hours editing it for me. I wouldn’t have had the courage without their support.

Chapter 1

First Impressions

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When I was born on September 11, l935, atop Sand Mountain, Alabama, I was Daddy’s disappointment. He wanted a boy to help with the farming. As soon as I figured this out, I resolved to be the boy he wanted. Even at a very young age, my mind was like a sponge. I watched everything Mama or Daddy did and remembered it. At the age of maybe 4 years, Mama had gone to do something and I knew it was getting time for lunch. I felt I had to do something. Daddy worked hard and needed food. I had watched Mama cook and I thought I could make Daddy some cornbread. I got the cornmeal and an egg and mixed it together with a little water. Then I put it all into the pan I had seen Mama use. Our house was heated by our wood cook stove which was always hot. I managed to get the cast iron pan into the stove. I don’t know how it cooked; I kept looking at it every 5 minutes to see if it was done. When it was getting brown, I called Daddy to come to dinner. I sat the table and got him a glass of milk. God bless my daddy! The cornbread was hard and dry, but he ate it as if it were perfect. He told me how good it was and thanked me for cooking for him and went back to work.

I guess this set the tone for the rest of my life. Nobody was as great as my father. Daddy loved the steel guitar he had ordered with instruction from Sears and Roebuck and taught himself to play. He practiced while my mother fixed breakfast. I remember waking up many mornings to the Steel Guitar Rag.

We lived on a hill and the branch where we got our water was at the bottom of the hill. Mama sent me to get water with two one gallon buckets. I could only return with them half full because walking back up the hill the buckets would hit the ground every time I took a step and the water would splash out. I didn’t think this was anything unusual; it was just my share of the work and something I could do to help.

Daddy and Mama raised cotton on the farm along with fruits and vegetables. In the summer, Mama would go to the vegetable market in Gadsden with whatever we had to sell. With the money she could buy a few things we needed. In the fall, Daddy and a friend would take the cotton in a mule drawn wagon to the cotton gin at Clarence which was about 10 mile from where we lived. One particular time they had to stay all day and wait in line for the cotton to be taken off the wagon. While they were waiting, some other friends gave Daddy some corn liquor. Daddy did not usually drink. However much he drank that day, it was way too much. He came home that night lying in the back of the wagon throwing up all over himself and the wagon. Mama was mad but she felt sorry for him and didn’t yell at him. His friends brought him into the house and put him to bed. Mama put cold towels on his head. He threw up blood for three days and it was five days before he was back to normal. He never was able to drink after that.

When I was still 4 my mother gave birth to my oldest brother, Durwood. I was in heaven. It was like having a doll to play with. I never had many toys; I didn’t know I needed toys to be happy.

The house we lived in was really cold in the winter because there were cracks in the wooden floor. Most of our time was spent by the fireplace with a rolling fire. One really cold winter it snowed and all of us went out in the snow and caught rabbits. It was easy because we could see their tracks. We didn’t have cages to put them in, so Mama would tie them to the bed frame while we went out and caught more. This was the greatest game I had ever played. We ate good for a week; our fridge was the great outdoors.

When I was about 5 years old we moved to a better house close to my grandparents, Frank and Ruthie Kent. We had a big cotton patch in back of our house and they had started to dig a well. (In those days you had to dig them by hand.) It was about five feet across and about 3 feet deep. There was no water in it yet so when they went to the field they would put me and Durwood in the well and tell me to call if I needed them. With us they put a few toys, a bottle for Durwood, something for us to snack on, and a jar of water for me. Ever the obedient child, I didn’t see anything wrong with this.

Later, in the fall, it was cotton picking time. Of course, they could not take us to the field so I was told to look after my brother. I thought I was doing a good job but somehow I got distracted and when they came home for lunch they found Durwood under the apple tree eating rotten apples. The first thing Daddy could find to whip me with was a radio antenna wire. It left welts on my legs. Mama cried and I think Daddy had to turn his head so I couldn’t see him cry. Of course, I was screaming like the world was coming to an end. That was the only time my father ever had to discipline me for anything. After that, I always did exactly as I was told.

I loved to help Daddy take care of the animals. I always followed him to the barn, watching exactly how he did everything. One day he told me to feed the horse some corn. I went into the corn bin and got a big armful of corn, when I raised up I felt something slither down my leg and realized it was a huge snake. I screamed. Daddy came running in. I yelled, There is a big snake in the corn. He laughed and said, It’s OK Sis. It’s just a rat snake and it keeps the rats out of the corn. It won’t hurt you. That’s why I have never been afraid of snakes.

One night when I was about 6 years old, my father woke me and told me to get dressed; that he needed me at the barn. I didn’t ask questions. I just got dressed and went with him to the barn. When I got there I could see for some reason that our sow was in trouble. She was breathing hard and obviously in pain. I didn’t realize why until Daddy explained that she couldn’t have her piglets and Mama and his hands were too big to reach into the sow and get the pigs out. I had to do it. I calmly reached into the sow, blood all over me and pulled out 10 little piglets, one by one. They wee screaming at the top of their lungs! I knew how important these pigs were to our lives. We would have pork for the winter and I would have clothes and shoes to start school. I was so proud to be Daddy’s Hero! After that nobody had to explain where babies came from. It felt good to know something that other kids my age didn’t know. I just didn’t know how they got there.

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Daddy had a bad crop one year and we didn’t have money to eat during the winter so he took the family and some cousins to Florida to pick oranges. The house we lived in was across the road from a pond and in the middle of an orange grove and it was raised about 3 feet off the ground. I remember going out in the morning and seeing alligator tracks under our house. We didn’t go out at night.

Chapter 2

Lessons in Independence

One of the crops Daddy planted every year was hay for the animals in the winter. When it got ready to bale, he would hire a couple of men to bale it for him and then help him get it into the barn in their truck. I was the water boy. One year when I was about 7 years old, I was bringing them water and Daddy yelled to bring two pillows. I got the pillows, wondering why he needed them. When I got to the field he told me to put one pillow on the seat and the other one behind me. He needed me to pull the truck up as they loaded the hay. Needless to say, I didn’t know how to drive! I looked at him with a look that plainly said You have got to be kidding me! All he said was, You can do it, Sis. When you want to go, put your foot here. When you want to stop, put your foot here. I drove that pick up all day start, stop, start, stop. I learned to drive a straight shift pick up truck that way. I was so excited I could hardly sit still; it was a real adrenaline rush.

When my brother, Durwood, was about 4 years old, he had