The Ship Built Beneath My Feet: A Memoir

By Ella Gentry

My heart has been broken a thousand times along the way, like everyone. It is unavoidable, and when it happens, we try to make sense of it, to give it meaning, to name it. We consider what we might have learned ~ possibly something worth sharing.
Strength rose out of weakness as the young woman of my past stumbled over insecurities and

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.Rawlins
• Release date: May 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732217034

Book preview

The Ship Built Beneath My Feet

A Memoir

Written By

Ella Gentry

© 2017 by Ella Gentry

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission. All images are © the artists, reproduced with the kind permission of the artists and/or their representatives.

ISBN: 978-1-7322170-3-4

Colophon

Author: Ella Gentry

Cover Artist: Eddie

Graphic Art: Roots Family History

Printer: Ingram Spark

Dedication

Dedicated to my five children

Eddie

Addie

Stella

Luke

Izzy

…And to my Grandchildren

Danielle

Olivia

Lincoln

Sophia

Paige

Meredith

Bennett

Austin

Gabriel

Mallory

…And Great Grand children

Matthew

Simeon

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my parents who laid a solid foundation upon which I would build my life. And to my children, who provided life’s steepest learning curve, made me reach higher and search deeper, and of course, my grandchildren, all of whom are the reason for this monumental project.

A special thank you goes to Addie, who gave at least three go arounds reviewing my manuscript, who remained certain of its merit. Both she and Izzy, read with heart and soul, sharing my passion in tears and laughter. They were infinitely encouraging.

Thank you to my son, Eddie, who spent hours creating the beau- tiful painting that became the cover for this book.

Cathleen, a longtime friend was my first line of defense against myself. Her willingness to read my manuscript at its most primitive stage and save me from semi-colon overkill and other horrific mistakes will ever be appreciated.

Thank you to the many who are a part of my story, the lifers, and those that were just passing through, and the many who little more than crossed my path, even strangers, who in fleeting seconds looked me in the eye and said hello ~ all have mattered. Many left lasting impressions, some, I probably never even realized. We just never know.

To anyone who may read my story, thank you for letting me share it with you.

Shared memories will be experienced differently, with a range of interpretations and emotional responses. As pointed out by my nephew, Thomas, All are true. One cannot dispute individual memories.

Many of my recollections have been lifted from the pages of an extensive journal kept over the years. Memories of long ago conversations have by necessity, been reconstructed to give voice to real people, adding glimpses into their personalities. Some names have been changed to protect privacy.

I present my story with good intention and integrity.

"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain.

It’s the lonliness of it. Memories need to be shared."

- Lois Lowry, The Giver

Part 1

I am never alone, or insignificant when a snapshot memory carries me back home. It is my reference point on almost every subject.

Chapter 1

L

ight brown hair fell below his shoulders. Soft hazel eyes looked out from beneath the rim of a black cowboy hat propped up by the colossal chip on his shoulder. He was wounded and angry. The old adage that time heals all wounds did not seem to be holding true for Luke, or maybe not enough time had passed, or maybe time doesn’t really heal all wounds. Maybe there are just some wounds that can never be healed, where distractions become convenient and crucial bandages holding us together.

Far into the future I would learn this profound truth in a way I could not have predicted in a million years. It would plunge me into unfamiliar depths of complexities and crushing realizations illuminating how incredible the journey all had been, but not first without pain, a shattering kind of pain that both Luke and I could not escape ~ and there would be others.

It would thrust me into an urgent distraction ~ this unintentional project that would take years to complete. It would be a long journey backward. It would fill me with laughter and tears, gratitude and hope.

But for now, on this day I worried at how well my young son would do on a military base so far away from home, his senior year in high school. There would be challenges ahead that we could not have anticipated. They would force me to reach into an unknown reserve of strength to meet them, and I would learn more about myself and the world than I could have envisioned.

Izzy was the baby of my brood of five, adored and fussed over by older siblings. At eleven years, old, her almost perfect little world had completely unraveled. She too, had suffered, leaving her sad and confused. Now at thirteen she seemed at least steady if not entirely happy.

The three of us arrived at Boise’s small airport to begin the first leg of a long journey that would last two years. My lengthy tenure as an adult student at Boise State University was paying off. It had taken six years…a journey through personal insecurities and incompetence ~ playing strains of a long-worn melody of shoulds and should nots, religious traditions and crippling notions of my place in the world as a woman ~ screaming a thousand directives from every course ~ except the one from within. I survived it…and managed giant leaps forward. This next step was the biggest leap of all.

Eddie, my first born ~ born of a teenage marriage that didn’t stand a chance, had been in Salt Lake City for most of a decade with his high school friend, Carl. They’d torn up the highways of Utah on their Harleys, wind blowing through hair - wild and reckless with little thought for their own safety, or the future. An occasional stop here and there along the way for an over-nighter in the county jail would usually bring a desperate phone call. The rest of the time I worried about him.

He had at last returned home to Idaho. Now we were leaving. He felt abandoned.

We all gathered at the airport where we clung to each other and wept over this long impending separation.

Addie and Stella barely two years apart in age, now in their twenties finally stopped fighting just long enough to make it into young adulthood and were on the brink of forging a lifelong friendship. Addie, the oldest, was newly engaged to Robert, and Stella and Tyler’s marriage was in its second year. Two beautiful young women, so different in so many ways…Addie was my shy one, reluctant to draw attention to herself. She vowed as a child that when she grew up she would live next door to me. As much as possible she kept her word, never venturing farther than a mile or two. Stella, on the other hand was outgoing, dreamed of far-away places and couldn’t wait to leave.

After almost a full day of landings, layovers and changing planes, my two youngest and I finally boarded our last flight, a Boeing 707 out of Kennedy Airport. Hours of excitement and anticipation gave way to exhaustion. Luke and Izzy stopped tormenting each other and fell asleep. I laid my head back on a pillow and put in my ear plugs blotting out the sounds of crying babies, people shuffling back and forth to the restroom, snoring, and all sorts of restlessness movement.

It was the first time in days, probably months that I truly relaxed. Was this really real? How did it all happen? How did I get here ~ A small town girl from Podunk, Idaho?

The tranquil hum of the engines was soothing. I gazed into the night sky, my mind drifting back to those fitful childhood dreams of flying where the most strenuous efforts could not halt the horrifying plunge toward earth just before waking in breathless panic. I smiled to myself. They were less frequent now, but continued into adulthood - thrilling and terrifying as ever.

My small wings had grown over the past few years. This flight would be their big test. It was no dream. Reality wrapped itself around me as I looked at my sleeping children resting against each other. I gazed again into the darkness. I had not once doubted this decision to uproot and move my children abroad. I could not have passed up this teaching opportunity. Still, there here were so many unknowns.

The past two years had been brutal. These two were sorely injured, maybe more so than the others. I wanted desperately for this to turn out right.

Chapter 2

T

his journey was a very long way from that safe little world of my childhood where there were absolutes and certainties. It was okay that possibilities didn’t reach far beyond the small-town limits where I grew up. Our dreams were simple. We were defined by a large extended family and The Church.

Like hundreds of farm communities that had their beginnings along river banks, so too did American Falls, a tiny Idaho town built along the Snake River in the late 1800s. In 1925 the construction of the first dam was begun by the Bureau of Reclamation, a means to harness the plentiful water supply for year around irrigation.

Most of the large Shelby clan lived in the same part of town, Old Town it was called - a mile or two from the Snake River Dam.

We all went to the same and only school, the same church – celebrated holidays together and depended on each other. Any action of misconduct was quickly noticed and quickly reported - making its way to our own front door where no explanation was good enough.

My father was the sixth child of twelve. He was born in Ione, WA where my grandparents had traveled from Kentucky sometime before 1917. Having converted to the Mormon Church in Kentucky, they moved west to be in Zion and raise their children among the Saints, (Mormons). Grandma had insisted on moving to Idaho to escape the rough shod drinking cussing ways of North West lumber jack life – notwithstanding the fact that Grandma’s brothers, who followed them west, brought with them their Kentucky ways and soon set up shop making moonshine in Bowen Canyon a few miles south east of American Falls known as Moonshine Lane.

Kentucky had been a neutral state at the beginning of the Civil War. Later it came under the control of the Union, but it remained very much divided and a place where brother literally fought against brother.

The Civil War ended twenty-five years before Grandmother was born, but the spirit of it carried on in Kentucky and lingered with her forever as did her strong allegiance to the South. Her scorn toward northerners, which she faithfully referred into her old age as Yankees, was surpassed by her disdain toward blacks. In an era before such attitudes were deemed socially incorrect, she made no effort to conceal them.

My father’s attitude was equally as severe.

If the teacher ever makes you sit by a nigger in school you tell me, he’d said.

I must have been around nine or ten years old, but even then, I found the remark puzzling since there was not a single black student in our school. I hadn’t the slightest idea why, nor did I dare ask. I just knew it was taboo.

According to the Mormon Church, the white man was highly favored. From 1849 to 1978 church policy forbid black men from holding the priesthood and all blacks from entering Mormon temples.

As I matured these views did not seem altogether rational, although I would learn later in life that the rational mind does not always hold power over a time-honored system of ingrained beliefs.

Grandpa scratched out a living dry farming while Grandma planted a mammoth ten-acre garden early each spring. Bushels of vegetables were sold to folks in town to pay for shoes and coats for her large brood before the first snow fall, and in her spare time she made heavy quilts - warming little bodies against the chill of harsh Idaho winters in a big drafty house up Bowen Canyon.

Grandma was a serious taskmaster, rousing kids out of bed at the crack of dawn - lining them up at the heads of long rows of corn and beans and every kind of vegetable that would grow in the region.

Get clean down under them roots, she’d order, or the weeds ‘ill grow back, same instruction we grandkids got years later when they moved in town and had a much smaller garden ~ only relative to the size of the one up the canyon.

Daddy inherited Grandma’s gardening expectations and work ethic, inflicting them upon my brother Abe and me. We weeded early in the morning before breakfast, before it got hot. Gratefully, Daddy’s garden was not nearly as large as Grandma’s.

Most of Grandma and Grandpa’s twelve children settled in and around the American Falls area, several within a two-mile radius. Most had large families. The oldest, Aunt Jean had fourteen children.

Daddy’s nine sisters were all forces to be reckoned with and hard workers, like Grandma. Several of them became nurses and most of them were stronger than the men they married.

My father, Edward was the Prince of the family, the first-born boy after four daughters. When my mother became annoyed at his royal self-perception, she would remind him how much Grandma had spoiled him and that he was not in fact ~ King Edward.

The small log house that Daddy built was unfinished the first winter that we lived in it. He said the bank wouldn’t loan him the money he needed to complete the job until spring, so caulking in between the logs had to wait until then. That first cold winter my younger brother Abe and I slept on a second-hand couch in the living room, one in which the back could be let down flat into a bed.

The wood burning stove in the kitchen was our only source of heat, not enough to heat the bedrooms. The coal burning furnace came a few years later. We stayed cozy buried under Grandma’s heavy homemade quilts, enthralled by the light of a bright moon shining through the cracks of the logs, giggling - watching our breath.

Momma, are we poor?

Just a little hard up, she’d say, but we are not poor. We have a good house and plenty of food and everything we need." And indeed, we did.

The absence of posh luxury was scarcely noticeable until I was well into grade school when the uptown girls in their Janzen sweaters and wool plaid skirts made me aware of any contrast, but life was good. I had fifty cousins and was never alone, never lonely, never without the collective imagination of the group. However, life in our safe little perfect world was not always safe - not always perfect.

Lurking around the edges of our lives were two shiftless old codgers, distant relatives. Neither had ever married. Mother had no use for either of them, although I wasn’t sure why because they were always kind enough. Walt, a distant cousin to Daddy, five times removed or something like that, would on occasion give us kids a quarter. I never liked his yellow toothed grin; he smelled of stale tobacco.

Early that Monday morning, Mother was hanging the clean washed laundry out to dry. Monday was wash day for almost everyone in the neighborhood. Daddy was out on the road working.

The little girl opened the door without hesitation. She knew better than let a stranger in, but everyone all around was family, or close neighbors, people that went to church together. There were no strangers.

Where’s your mother? he asked.

Outside hanging the washing on the line.

He sat down and held out a shiny fifty cent piece, Come here, he said gently, taking her by the arm and pulling her onto his lap placing his hand just above her knee. Her cheeks burned with humiliation. She moved away from him, but not quick enough.

If you do that again, she blurted, "I’ll tell - and Daddy ‘ll shoot you."

Walt had the good sense to know the truth in the words of this little red-haired girl.

A drop of reason wouldn’t have stood a chance back then - my young impetuous father, this man with his pronounced sense of morality, capable of raw blind seething rage. There would be no stopping him. In a flash, the rifle would be ripped from its leaning position against a closet wall – we would step back powerless - terrified and watch as he pumped a bullet into the chamber, storming to Walt’s trailer, tearing the door from its hinges. A loud booming crack would fill the air for blocks and Daddy would go to jail, and I knew it.

Walt never approached me again and I never told, but when Daddy arranged for a blind date with Walt and an unsuspecting old maid, (who by the standard of the day should have long since married). I watched and cringed as Daddy introduced them and felt guilty for not warning her.

I was glad when it came to nothing.

Chapter 3

T

he old Victorian house stood separated from ours by a narrow gravel road, surrounded by big trees with its mysterious second story and charming balcony. It stood between Grandma’s house and ours. We ached to go upstairs, a desire enhanced because it was adamantly forbidden. My cousin Kate and I persuaded Liz into sneaking us up the bewitching passageway when we were too soon given away by the creaking old wooden stairs, making me regret the conspiracy. We barely got a tantalizing peek before the sound of a familiar shrieking, Get down those stairs this minute, you know better than that.

Liz, just a year younger than me and Kate must have been a surprise to her parents who seemed old. Liz’s older sister was grown and gone, or close to it by the time Liz came along, so she was raised as an only child.

Through no fault of her own she was spoiled, not spoiled as in a child left to run amuck, not at all; in fact, she was impeccably well behaved, but she had everything that a little girl could wish for and beyond, which by itself was not the problem. The problem was her mother, who seemed to suffer from an imagined sense of her own superior social standing from those of her neighbors ~ us.

What makes Mrs. Shultz think she is so much better than the rest of us? my mother commented more than once. Her remarks undoubtedly accounted in part for my attitudes. The rest were easily inspired from Mrs. Shultz herself who genuinely despised me.

She had a sharp tongue that made both adults and the neighborhood kids’ recoil with her insults and little stinging jabs. Where in the world did you get those pants? she remarked with scorn. Don’t touch anything, she warned when we entered her house.

Doesn’t your brother have any shoes to wear?" She disliked my brother Abe nearly as much as she disliked me.

Yet there were times that she could be pleasant enough - allowing us, even inviting us to come in and play with Liz’s dolls and dress up in old grown up dresses and hats. Sometimes she would serve warm baked cookies and be especially kind, but I knew better than to let my guard down; in an instant, her disposition could turn icy.

Mrs. Shultz’s nastiness fueled my childhood indignation and I was always on the lookout for ways to punish her for her spitefulness toward us.

Kate and I were inseparable. She and her three siblings lived with Grandma and Grandpa next door to Schultz’s house. Aunt Maude was a nurse at the hospital working long hours while Grandma tended the kids. Uncle Owen, Kate’s father was in the Air Force stationed in Japan. When he returned, he seemed even more distant than before he left.

Kate and I buried our bare toes in the cool grass. It was a warm summer July day. We gazed across the narrow road that separated my house from Shultz’s. The tea party looked alluring. Little girls from uptown in their cotton ruffled dresses and patent leather shoes filled the air with laughter as they ate white cake with chocolate frosting. Mrs. Shultz fussed about - refilling glasses with lemonade, chatting with the mothers who relaxed in white metal lawn chairs. They were from the affluent side of town. Mrs. Shultz must have hated living among all the poor folk with their little rag muffins running up and down the sidewalk in front of her lovely house.

We sat in silence in plain sight ~ watching, too young to know about pride, bewildered that we had not been invited ~ oblivious to what was taking shape inside us.

Such childhood happenings are often forgotten, but their affects are not.

Mrs. Shultz was much too formidable to aim my childish frustrations directly at her, so they all landed on Liz, sweet gentle Liz - who really did not deserve any of what came her way. Mrs. Shultz was the projected target of every devilish prank. Liz was the means to that end. I knew the consequence of my bad behavior, but it rarely seemed to be a deterrent.

Longing for inclusion into the tight cocoon that wrapped around Kate and me, Liz was sometimes persuaded to do things even when she knew better, like tossing her porcelain doll into the air while we threw our rubber dolls as high as we could with no risk…some sort of silly game in which we were supposed to catch them. Kneeling on the hard ground picking up the broken pieces of Liz’s porcelain doll, feeling remorseful, I knew it was a rotten mean-spirited trick. My regrets were instantly tempered by sweet satisfaction and fear. Mrs. Shultz barged through the banging screen door waving her arms madly in the air, yelling assertions that were only partly true.

I stayed alert for chances to play out the wretched little schemes rolling around inside my head and seldom lacked for participants to help carry them out. My shy doe eyed little brother was my most eager follower, although he was quite capable of causing a flurry on his own.

The tree just across the narrow road from our house was the best climbing tree in our neighborhood. Abe recalls it having big chunky loose bark making it easy to grab as he scaled high. We were forbidden to climb it, so we waited until no one was stirring in or around the big house.

Abe was the real expert, climbing higher and higher, his toughened bare feet gripping monkey like while I stood beneath the mammoth branches hollering up encouragement, when unexpectedly the screen door made a loud slam and out stormed a starched house dress - bursting of red rage – hands on hips and nostrils flaring, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Get down out of that tree this minute!!

Don’t do it Abe, she’ll beat you, I yelled. Mrs. Shultz never struck any of us, but she wouldn’t hesitate to grab us by the arm or collar and drag us home.

Abe climbed higher and higher until he was almost out of sight and waited her out. She grew tired from cocking her head upward shouting threats; finally turning she stormed into the house. When I could see the coast was clear and she was not standing in front of her big window, I shouted, She’s gone inside, make it fast! He scaled down in lightening speed - bolted across the graveled road and hid out in the basement until the heat lifted.

Flipping each other into the air on the long board teeter totter that Daddy had built out of scrap lumber, with dreams of become flying trapeze artists, like the ones we’d seen on the Lawrence Welk show, and one day running away with the Ringling Brother’s Circus were gladly abandoned for the chance to go to Eckles’, a tiny little market no more than three blocks up the street from our house. We were usually able to convince Mother to squeeze out a nickel each from her small carefully guarded budget for a treat.

She handed me the list: a quart of milk, a loaf of bread and a small jar of peanut butter. There will be some change left over; stick it in your pants pocket Ella. Don’t lose it! she admonished.

So, what’ll it be kids? Mr. Eckles waited, trying his best to be patient. He always made me flustered as I tried to decide from the rows of bins of candy behind the counter.

One bubble gum ball, one banana taffy, one nigger baby, one lady finger, one tootsie roll. Nigger Baby was the actual name of the tiny baby shaped licorice pieces.

The afternoon was hot and three blocks felt like a mile. We meandered slowly eating our penny candy when we spotted the tree that had called out more than once to be climbed ~ just a few feet away, over a fence that paralleled the sidewalk. Let’s climb it, Abe said.

We left the brown paper bag with the milk, the loaf of bread and peanut butter next to the fence while we each took our turn and stretched the barbed-wire while the other crawled underneath.

Abe scurried on up as far as he could while I dangled upside down by my knees on a long branch about five or six feet above the ground. Everything was going along fine, until I let my arms fall over my head allowing my pockets to fall wide open. Before I had a chance to correct my mistake, nickels, dimes, pennies and quarters had fallen into the tall weeds below.

Our best efforts failed to retrieve half of the scattered coins.

Didn’t I tell you not to lose it, Mother scolded. That’s all the money we have for a solid week. I understood fully the impact of my carelessness.

It all turned out well enough however. For months - even years I think, as Abe and I stopped along the way each time Mother sent us to Eckles’ to buy a few urgent items, we would scamper under the barbed-wire fence and search among the new weeds and mud of early spring, the orange leaves of fall and in the winter, we’d kick away the snow almost always finding a few pennies, sometimes a dime or nickel maybe even a quarter.

Mother was easily abused by the insults and tirades of the neighborhood antagonist.

I longed for the day when she would stand up to her, but it was not in her gentle nature to do so until one day when she had finally reached her limits.

Mrs. Shultz knew no boundaries. A few weeks into the summer something happened, I cannot remember exactly what, but I must have thought it serious enough to merit impending fallout, which sent me on the run for home where I hid myself in a closet.

Bursting through the front door without bothering first to knock, foaming at the mouth with rage, Mrs. Shultz stood with one hand one her hip. Where’s that brat of yours? she demanded.

Mother stood puzzled and unresponsive as Mrs. Shultz charged passed her coming nigh of ripping the closet door off its hinges – gripping me by the arm, she yanked me out into the open.

Mom, typically timid, tapped into her power reserve, Get your hands off her! she ordered. And get out of my house!

Sadly, the inquisition which followed did not result in proving my complete innocence as I had wished, but I was proud of Mother that day and sensed in her a reluctant ally.

Chapter 4

A

t eight years old, I was sure I’d collected enough sins to send me straight to hell, so it was a happy occasion when the date of my baptism arrived in the month of June. A group of six or seven children loaded into two cars for the short drive to Aberdeen, a tiny town just a few miles over the American Falls Dam. It was there in the baptismal fount we were each baptized.

All dressed in white, we each took our turn stepping down the two or three steps into a large porcelain font into the waters of baptism where we would gain forgiveness. I knew and was sure that God knew how much I needed a fresh start.

Riding home in a car full of noisy kids following the baptism I sat quietly in the back seat thinking - feeling pleased at the possibilities of my new beginnings, resolved to never do another bad thing in my life.

Mugs, our old ratty grey and white dog sat beside me on the high porch taking in the sunshine later that day, and we just minding our own business - when along came Charlie Ingersol bent on ruining my new resolve.

Your dog’s ugly, he yelled.

Come over here and say that! I shouted back. Charlie did just that. We scuffled on the porch for a minute or two before I hauled off and knocked him off.

He gathered himself up screaming like a little girl. I watched as he took off for home and wondered if they would let me get re-baptized.

Winter came like no other that year. It was the coldest winter on record and dangerous to be outside for long. Blinding white snow covered the fence posts - and higher. We could slide down either side on our sleds.

The school bus took all the kids home those perilous days - even those of us who didn’t ride the bus. Stopping in front of each house the driver waited as each child plodded through the waist deep snow to the front door where mothers waved him on when every child was safely pulled inside.

Fortunately, Daddy had gotten the bank loan he needed to caulk between the logs that fall, making it warm inside.

When the snow was not hazardous, we walked to school. Kate and I were late about half of those days. We meandered through the little park adjacent to the grade school stopping to make snow angels and roll down the hill in our thick snowsuits. We could hear the bell ring as we watched from the distance while all the kids made a dash to line up and march into the building. We giggled and kept on rolling in the snow until we were freezing cold.

Finally arriving soaking wet to the skin, Mrs. Keaton draped our snow suits over the heaters while we sat next to them warming ourselves while our cotton dresses dried.

The embarrassment of a good scolding in front of the class on those mornings had little effect over the enticement of fresh soft snow of another day.

By the time the second grade rolled around the strength of our little duo gave us the much-needed courage to survive Mrs. Lewis, who found no humor in our little antics.

She read aloud to the class following lunch while we put our heads down on our desks for a brief rest. I enjoyed these peaceful moments, as she slithered up and down the aisles in perfect silence except for the sound of her monotone voice that nearly put us to sleep.

Kate sat directly across the aisle from me. We tried to be inconspicuous chewing a concealed glob of bubble gum, knowing full well it should have been deposited in the trash before entering the classroom; we were careful not break the silence. Holding the wad firmly between our teeth - we would stretch it across the two feet distance that separated us and stuck it to the other’s desk.

Our concentration held steady as not to giggle or disturb others, so much so - we were unaware of our detection when out of the blue - a half inch thick wooden ruler came hard and swift across our fingers.

The sting lasted and so did the redness.

Mother was mad, more at the teacher than me, I think, but one did not defy school authority. Promise not to tell Daddy, I begged, knowing there would be little sympathy from him.

The only other time a teacher laid a finger on me was when Miss Jensen shook me like a rag doll when I was in the fifth grade, for failing to turn in an English assignment.

Boys occasionally got the paddle, but rarely did a girl.

By the time the third grade rolled around the teachers all had our number and Kate and I were not allowed in the same classroom, not for several years, not until the sixth grade. It was there that we discovered love.

His dark hair and dreamy blue