Miss Perris Valley

By Marlayna Glynn

If you loved Marlayna Glynn's best-selling memoir OVERLAY, her mother's story, MISS PERRIS VALLEY is a must-read!

"Marlayna Glynn is in her comfort zone in the memoir genre. Her previous works covered her own challenging childhood in 1970's Las Vegas. In this effort, Marlayna takes on the subject of her own mother. This in many ways brings closure for the reader (and possibly the author), on the reasons for the author's neglected upbringing.

If you want a novel with a nice and tidy happy ending, this isn't for you. If you want a memoir that deals with issues of alcoholism, abuse, emotional isolation, and neglect head on and in a meaningful way, this is a tremendous effort. There has not been a writer who has dealt so eloquently with such themes since Frank McCourt or possibly Jeannette Walls."—John Lennon

Avis knew one thing…

She wanted to be a good mother.

At least a better mother than her own had been.

Could she be the exception in her family?

She traded Romoland for Modesto, married young, and started a family. Checking the boxes didn't a happy marriage make. Before her children were a few years old, she already knew she'd made a mistake.

There was something about men. And the city. And glitz. And glamor. She knew she had to get away. Hollywood. Vegas. Cocktails. Movie stars...

Surely being a two-time beauty contest winner would pave the way to happiness. 

Wasn't this what the 1950s preached?

But something didn't add up.

The 1950s didn't deliver. 

You'll love this tragedy with a twist, because everyone loves a broken woman trying to do what's right.

Get it now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Birthright Books
• Release date: Jun 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393994213

Marlayna Glynn

Marlayna Glynn is an award-winning non-fiction writer of more than 50 books and the founder of Birthright Books, a publisher dedicated to the art of memoir, legacy and heirloom publications. Marlayna's published journey includes Overlay: One Girl's Life in 1970s Las Vegas, Angeles, As All Hell, Forty Something Phoenix, Rest In Places, The Scattering of All: Tales From Extraordinary Survivors of Suicide Loss, and Miss Perris Valley Find Marlayna's short film People That do Something, which is based on a chapter from Overlay, on Marlayna's Youtube channel. To contact Marlayna please visit www.marlaynaglynn.com.

Book preview

.

The precursor to the award-winning memoir,

Overlay: One Girl’s Life in 1970s Las Vegas

by

Marlayna Glynn

.

All song titles are used without permission. 

Copyright © 2018 Marlayna Glynn

All rights reserved.

This work depicts actual events in the life of the author as truthfully as recollection permits and/or can be verified. Allowances shall be granted for the vagaries of memory. Occasionally, dialogue consistent with the character or nature of the person speaking has been approximated. All persons within are actual individuals; there are no composite characters.

Second Kindle edition March 2020

Birthrights Books

Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico

www.birthrightbooks.pub

Praise for

Miss Perris Valley

"Marlayna Glynn is in her comfort zone in the memoir genre. Her previous works covered her own challenging childhood in 1970’s Las Vegas. In this effort, Marlayna takes on the subject of her own mother. This in many ways brings closure for the reader (and possibly the author), on the reasons for the author’s neglected upbringing. . . .

If you want a novel with a nice and tidy happy ending, this isn’t for you. If you want a memoir that deals with issues of alcoholism, abuse, emotional isolation, and neglect head on and in a meaningful way, this is a tremendous effort. There has not been a writer who has dealt so eloquently with such themes since Frank McCourt or possibly Jeannette Walls."

—John Lennon

"A great story about the life of a very brave woman who always had it in her to live for the most in every moment, look forward to tomorrow and not give in. I admire her humble nature, and ability to still smile at the thought of happy times. At wasn't alone... There are a lot of us who shared the same story, and it feels good to have a spokeswoman brave enough to put it out there to be heard.

Thank you, Avis! And thank you for the gift of an amazing daughter: an inspiration and talented woman."

—Chris Staats

Marlayna once again writes a beautiful story with truth of life. She is an author that never fails.

—Sharia Barnhart

A perfect followup to Marlayna's Trilogy books of her childhood and young adulthood. Now I know her mother's side of things although her lack of interaction and neglect of her daughter is heartbreaking.

—Robin Norris

––––––––

Also by Marlayna Glynn

Overlay: One Girl's Life in 1970s Las Vegas

Angeles

As All Hell

Forty Something Phoenix

Rest in Places

A Scattering of All

.

This book is dedicated to anyone who needs to know that life is what you make it.

Choose wisely.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE......................................................................................6

CHAPTER TWO....................................................................................10

CHAPTER THREE................................................................................12

CHAPTER FOUR..................................................................................16

CHAPTER FIVE...................................................................................21

CHAPTER SIX......................................................................................25

CHAPTER SEVEN................................................................................30

CHAPTER EIGHT.................................................................................33

CHAPTER NINE..................................................................................36

CHAPTER TEN....................................................................................40

CHAPTER ELEVEN.............................................................................46

CHAPTER TWELVE.............................................................................49

CHAPTER THIRTEEN..........................................................................53

CHAPTER FOURTEEN........................................................................57

CHAPTER FIFTEEN............................................................................63

CHAPTER SIXTEEN............................................................................67

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN......................................................................70

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.........................................................................75

CHAPTER NINETEEN.........................................................................79

CHAPTER TWENTY.............................................................................85

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE....................................................................89

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO....................................................................95

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE................................................................98

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR................................................................101

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE..................................................................108

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX....................................................................113

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN..............................................................117

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT...............................................................120

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.................................................................123

CHAPTER THIRTY.............................................................................127

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE....................................................................130

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO....................................................................133

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE................................................................137

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR..................................................................141

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE....................................................................144

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX......................................................................147

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN................................................................151

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.................................................................155

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE...................................................................159

CHAPTER FORTY..............................................................................163

.

Miss Perris Valley

.

CHAPTER ONE

Dream a Little Dream of Me

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you

Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you

But in your dreams whatever they be

Dream a little dream of me...

— Gus Kahn

I

n the winter of 1931, I was born in a small mining camp known as the most dangerous town in the United States. This nickname wasn’t earned by an overabundance of criminal activity (as would be the case today), but because of the steep vertical alignment of the town’s buildings against Longfellow Hill. The town’s 4,836-foot altitude rendered the construction of the early mining camp almost impossible, and the roads even more difficult. But there was copper in that area, and the men of the Arizona Copper Company were determined to claw it out. Given to nicknames, Morenci was also known as the town without a wheeled vehicle as home deliveries by the local shopkeepers had to be made by pack burro and ladder. These foot and burro paths were too narrow and steep for cars, so drivers parked at the foot of Longfellow and walked up that treacherous hill.

The Morenci area had been noted as an oasis for mineral discovery as early as 1856 by the pursuers of renegade Apache Indians. It wasn’t until the years spanning the Civil War that copper was discovered, changing more than just the face of the landscape. The new career opportunities for white men would cause a mass displacement of the many Native Americans living in the area. The next several decades saw copper mines built, opened, shut down, and reopened — depending upon the ferocity of the local Indian raids, as well as by the fluctuating price of copper. When the Detroit Copper Company gained ownership of the district in 1921, the town proudly grew to include the necessary public buildings to greet the new wave of commerce. The burro paths were blasted wide and paved with oiled gravel to accommodate vehicles. The high school football field was built on what had been the old slag dump. Extra points and field goals were always kicked from the north end, as any balls kicked from the south side would inevitably fall deep into Morenci Canyon.

The 1930s were exciting times in Morenci as the little mining camp enjoyed bragging rights to employ hard-working young miners. With no proper roads in the town, the men who flocked to Morenci had to be a particular kind of tough, as did the families of those early miners. The hot, dry, dusty mining town wasn’t exactly a mecca of culture and entertainment. Children were tethered to front yard trees by their mothers. The knots had to be extra-tight to keep the kids from tumbling into the canyon during playtime. Mothers had many jobs to do in the course of a day, and cooking and cleaning and laundry could hardly be carried out with tassels of small children underfoot. Tethering them to a tree seemed to be a viable option.

I can count on the fingers of one hand what I know about my father.

One, his name was Jay L. O’Bryan.

Two, he was born in Missouri in 1906.

Three, he worked as a miner for the Phelps Dodge Corporation in Morenci.

Four, his marriage certificate places him and Mother in Cushing, Oklahoma, on the date of their marriage, June 27, 1927.

Five, a 1930 census finds Jay, Juanita (Mother), my infant sister Maxine (then called Eula, but would eventually be known as Mickey), and my 14-year-old aunt Jenrose (Jink) living at C114 on E. Idill in Morenci, paying a monthly rent of $10.

(Five and a half, the small miner’s family did not own a radio set at the time of the census.)

My father was never a subject of discussion. Not even once. Once Mother slammed a door it remained shut forever; as tight as the thin, sharp lines of Mother’s lips. She was not a soft, gentle, loving woman. Nor was she prone to fond reminiscing of any nature, and so anything I could have learned about Jay L. O’Bryan went with Mother to the grave.

Everyone in my original family is gone now, except for my sister Mickey, and we know we are soon to follow. Our telephone conversations are warm but short, limited to periodic updates on our numerous physical sufferings, of which between the two of us there are many. The organs, bones, sinews, muscles, cartilage, and senses weaken as you approach the end of life. It’s a gradual process, but then there’s a crazy drop-off where the pain seems to exponentially multiply as you get closer to the end. As you make peace with your inevitable passing, the body likewise prepares to release its hold on life. I tell my daughter, Marlayna, that I don’t want to die in pain. I want to go to sleep and not wake up. While I have never been, and still am not one to share my thoughts with anyone, I feel it’s okay now to talk about the inevitable end of my life. At 87 years of age, I know my time is coming soon, which gives me the freedom and the courage to be honest.

We are irrevocably shaped from our earliest impressions, which, left unchallenged, become beliefs that line the deep grooves of our consciousness and form the genesis of our thoughts. If this is indeed true, then my early knowings told me one thing: men cannot be trusted. At least, not for very long. Just like the copper men claw and scrape from the ground, they take on a brilliant metallic luster when viewed so bright and shiny in the eyes of the beholder. Malleable, ductile, and easily drawn or stretched to meet the needs of the shaper, copper can at first be easily hammered without breaking. However, that shining color soon dulls when exposed to air, tarnishing into a shade of what it once was. And so, I learned, it is with men.

Shortly before my birth, the Morenci miners (of which my father was one) were instructed to drill test holes in the deposits. Although vast tonnages of ore were indicated, the treasure’s grade was deemed too low to be profitably mined by underground methods. A year later in 1932, all underground mining came to a halt in Morenci while the Great Depression marched across the U.S., trampling copper prices to less than six cents per pound. The sudden cessation of employment increased Jay L. O’Bryan’s pressure to provide for his young wife and two infant daughters, as well as the son who was soon to join the family. Mother’s belly was already showing evidence of the upcoming birth. Jay grew increasingly listless and unsettled. At 26 years of age, he was unemployed and had no hope of work in sight, yet he was saddled with a growing family to support. Morenci was not exactly a hub of career opportunity, leaving my father with too much time to drink, and it was said, to abuse my mother. The dashing Irishman known as Jay L. O’Bryan was soon not so dashing, becoming a shade of what he had been a few short years before. He faded just like the copper he had once dug from the ground.

Mother did what she could to help, but women had few opportunities available to earn a wage outside of labor around cooking or cleaning. All the young mining families around the young couple were in similarly desperate straits, and could little afford to pay another for work they could do themselves. One afternoon, Mother left Mickey and me with Jay while she went to the market to try and stretch their remaining funds into a meal. The last of Jay’s final pay was rapidly disappearing due to his escalating drinking. She returned to find Jay lying on the bed alongside me, watching a scorpion make its way across the bleached-white sheets. To Mother’s shocked eyes, Jay appeared to be curious — and it could even be said — eager to see what the scorpion would do to his daughter. Mother let the bag of flour she carried fall with a thump to the wooden floor as she raced toward the bed and scooped me into her arms. There’s always a defining moment at the end of a relationship, but, believe it or not, that wasn’t yet it.

Between 1930 and 1934 over one million families lost their farms across the U.S., prompting mass migration to the cities. Many men fared no better in finding employment there, as employers had their pick of young, energetic, workers. If a man lost his job, he was quickly thrown into an inescapable cycle of unemployment. Thirteen million people became unemployed during these years, and by 1932 thirty-four million people belonged to families with no full-time wage earner. The average family’s income dropped by 40%, causing a quarter of a million families to lose their homes. Several million homeless people began migrating around the country, many on foot, to make their way to new areas to survive.

Instead of seeking a way to support his family during these turbulent and uncertain years, Jay L. O’Bryan simply abandoned his. He took up with Mother’s very best friend, Eula, after whom Mother had named my older sister Eula Maxine O’Bryan just two years before. (Of no surprise to anyone, my sister was never called Eula again. She became known as Mickey, a name she later chose for herself after her favorite uncle.)

Poor Mother. Not yet twenty-one years old, but already hardened by a life as bereft of opportunity as the thinned mines and red dust and ramshackle homes around her. Women had few choices to support themselves back then, and it took a damn good reason to leave a wage-earning man in those years. Most aspects of a marriage could be tolerated, as the conventional thinking of the time was that much of life was about making do with what you had. Women endured what would later come to be seen as intolerable because they had few other choices but to bow down and withstand life’s lashings. While alcoholism, wife-beating, unemployment, poverty, and exposing your child to the potential for a scorpion sting were not viable reasons to leave a man, his having an affair with your best friend indeed was.

A penniless, uneducated Irish woman with two toddler girls and a boy on the way wasn’t in a strong position to call her shots, but Mother didn’t let that stop her. And so it was that the same year Amelia Earhart walked across the White House lawn with President Hoover, and Pablo Picasso painted Woman with a Flower, and Adolf Hitler lost Germany’s last presidential election to Hindenburg, Mother left Jay L. O’Bryan. She packed a small suitcase, and taking my sister’s hand and instructing her to take mine, she marched us to the bus stop.

A young couple stopped their 1932 Ford Roadster before Mother and her children, and asked if they could help? They told her they were headed to California, and since Mother had relatives there, she said it seemed like a fine place to go and agreed to join them. Thankful for the kindness of the young pair, Mother settled Mickey and me on the rumble seat of the Ford. With no more room in the car, Mother stood on the running board for the duration of the journey from Arizona, with her head inserted through the open car window, and her pregnant belly facing west. When asked how she withstood such an uncomfortable ride across three states — while pregnant — Mother later said that she would have crawled on her hands and knees out of Morenci with Mickey and me on her back if she had to.

I do not doubt that she would have.

.

CHAPTER TWO

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

They used to tell me I was building a dream

And so I followed the mob

When there was earth to plow or guns to bear

I was always there right on the job.

— E.Y. Harburg/Jay Gorney

I

n the 1930s, the American Creed dictated that people were responsible for their own fates. Victimhood was not an acceptable state of being, and it’s probably safe to say that few Americans went there even in the privacy of their thoughts. During the years of the Depression, in particular, there was a substantial wall of denial against the idea that national, social, or economic forces could affect a person despite their circumstances or skills. There is no doubt that Mother was of this belief, and therefore she didn’t waste a minute feeling sorry for herself. As a single mother of what would soon be three children, she had to take care of her family. She had to have been aware of the social stigma attached to going to soup kitchens or bread lines for assistance, but it was unlikely that she cared. The soup, bread, coffee, beans, and sandwiches provided by The Red Cross, Salvation Army, Catholic charities, fraternal orders, hospitals, newspapers, and other individuals were there for assistance, and she likely felt no shame in doing what she needed to do. There were very few women in the breadlines, as the conventional thinking of the day was that standing for hours in long lines was a man’s role, while the wife stayed at home with the children. Women like Mother, who had no man, were forced to take the children and join the line.

Mother moved us into a small house with peeling black tar paper on the outside walls. We had very little to start with other than what Mother had packed into that battered suitcase. There was a large metal barn nearby the tar-papered house, and inside were long tables piled high with folded clothes donated by the society ladies. Mother lined up along with all the other women in need and chose the allowed single pair of shoes and coat for each of us. At home we ate a lot of cornbread, crumbled into small bowls. Mother would add milk when we had it, and we ate it dry when there was none to be had. Sometimes the cornbread ran out, and we either had a drink of milk or we went hungry. So passed our first winter in sunny California.

The Depression affected men and women in different ways, which was the singular saving grace for Mother. Women earned less than men, and many employers were quick to take advantage of this situation. Almost immediately upon our arrival in California, Mother took a job as a sheet-cleaner, a low-paying housekeeping position at a local hospital. She wasn’t so unusual, as, like many families across the nation, women became the primary breadwinners.

In the hospital’s dark basement, she ironed a seemingly endless supply of white sheets on a huge mangle. She cranked the mangle by hand, running each sheet between two hot rollers, folded the sheet while it was still scorching hot, and then repeated the process anew. Sheet after sheet. Hour after hour. Day after day. It was hard work, but it was an ideal position for a young, healthy, single yet pregnant mother as she could bring Mickey and I with her to work. I remember the darkness of that massive basement, lit only by a single naked bulb hanging from a long black cord.

Mother moved us into a cramped apartment in Los Angeles with another single woman named Reitha, and her two kids. Reitha had a boyfriend named Bud Peel, and he spent a lot of time at the apartment. Both Reitha and Bud were good to us. I remember Reitha as a jolly lady with a high and happy laugh that often trilled throughout the little two-room apartment. Mother apparently liked Bud a lot, and he liked her right back. When Reitha found Bud in bed with Mother, she ended the relationship so he could marry Mother. Women didn’t have a lot of choices to support themselves, and if a woman could steal a man from another, more power to her. Reitha didn’t have the time or the inclination to feel sorry for herself. As a single mother herself, the business of finding a new man took precedence over any grief, jealousy, or ill will that might have arisen. Reitha soon married a man named Henry, and all the friendships continued as before. Mother and Reitha would remain friends for many decades to come.

The 1930s were not ideal times for women, despite the fact that they had an easier time finding employment than men at the beginning of the decade. The 1920s, when Mother came of age, was an exciting time for change. While it’s unlikely, given her poor circumstances on a New Mexican farm, that Mother was exposed to any higher-level thinking, as a young single mother she would have witnessed firsthand that the 1930s were nearly devoid of equal rights support. Women gained the right to vote in America in 1920, but it was not the catalyst for change that many had expected. The 19th Amendment passed, but the general thinking was that American women should remain at home or accept low-status jobs. This, naturally, resulted in women chasing the goal to attract the validating presence of a man in her life.

.

CHAPTER THREE

We’re in the Money

We’re in the money.

We’re in the money.

We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along.

We’re in the money.

The skies are sunny.

Old man Depression, you are through.

You’ve done us wrong.

— Al Dubin

B

ud Peel made an honest woman out of Mother, marrying her before she delivered my brother, Kenny. The name O’Bryan was swept as easily from our lives as the man himself had been. Mother’s second marriage validated the whole lot of us with one fell swoop, and things began to improve monumentally for our family when we became Peels. Bud and Mother bought a brand-new house in Burbank at 820 Parish Place. Bud took a job as a milkman, leaving early in the morning to deliver cold bottles of fresh milk to the doorsteps of Burbank. Mother stayed home initially with baby Kenny, and as soon as she could, she took whatever job she could find. Burbank was a real lovely town, and we were proud to have a newspaper, radio station, library, and bank.

First National Studio — which would become Warner Brothers — opened, as did Columbia Pictures and Walt Disney Studios. Soon Burbank would be known by the catchphrase Beautiful Downtown Burbank, a far cry from Morenci’s moniker: The Most Dangerous City in the U.S.

The summer after Bud and Mother were married, we made the only trip we ever took together to Hatch, New Mexico. Mickey and I were to be dropped off with family. I was to stay with my grandmother Lena in her old sod house. It had one room, furnished with a dining room table and three beds with sheets hung from the ceiling between them for privacy: one for Lena, one for her son, Ross, and one for her son, Wid. Across the vast alfalfa field, Mickey was to stay with Uncle Mickey and his wife in their home. I loved every single thing about my life on that farm. There were animals galore, including an old cow named Annabelle who was my very favorite of all. There were cows, bulls, chickens, roosters, sheep, lamb, and pigs. There was always something to do on the farm. Uncle Ross and Uncle Wid would go hunting, and I’d watch them hang meat in the meat house. There was an apple harvest and Mickey and I got to ride on a hay wagon pulled by two horses. There was an old rattlesnake, who believe it or not, took to sleeping next to me when I stretched out across the old wooden footbridge that stretched across one of the property’s small streams.

I loved my grandmother Lena, and felt loved by her in return. She was kind and gentle, providing a sense of belonging and security I did not experience in Mother’s home. Lena washed and brushed my hair, and tied it back in little pigtails, careful not to pull on my tender head. She kneeled before me and scrubbed my little face with an old worn washcloth until she was satisfied. In the evenings she held me close to her chest as we rocked in her old rocking chair, singing softly to me as my eyelids grew heavy. Talented with a sewing machine, she made cute little dresses for me that made her smile when I put them on. If it hadn’t been for Lena, I might not have known how love was supposed to feel. The barren, loveless environment I knew at home may have seemed natural if not for Lena. Thanks to my grandmother, I learned that hugging, kissing, and caressing your children is normal.

One afternoon as Mickey and I were entertaining ourselves chasing the chickens around the farm, we looked up to see three women walking toward us. Mickey immediately burst into a race toward the trio, just as I recognized Mother walking with her two sisters. Once I realized I was going to have to leave, I cried and begged to be able to stay at the farm with my grandmother, and my uncles, and all the farm animals. I cried something fierce but to no avail: Mother insisted that I return with her.

Lena took me inside to prepare me for the train ride back to California. She bathed me in the small metal tub, taking great care to wash the farm from my skin and hair. Afterward, she dressed me in the best of the little dresses she’d made for me. While Mother talked inside with her sisters and mother, I slipped out to kiss my beloved pigs goodbye, sitting right down in the slop so that I could wrap my little arms about their big, broad necks. When I walked back into Lena’s small sod house, the women turned and instantly their mouths fell open. Mother’s