Clara's Hidden Journal

By Judith Ellen Morris

Clara's journal reveals to us a passionate red-headed girl with a talent for independent thought and the courage to follow a single purpose to its conclusion. The story of a virtual orphan raised on a frontier farm is a personal history of life in California between the years 1890 to 1970. She writes of the delights brought about by invention, s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judith Ellen Morris
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578939476

Judith Ellen Morris

The summer my mother married a man with two children was a confusing and perilous time. That is when I began to retreat with a book. My favorites became historical fiction. I loved to escape for a while into another time and place and learn how other people lived, loved, faced adversity and made lemons into lemonade. I hope that Clara's Journal will be for you an interesting ride on a wave in the ocean of stories.

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Copyright

Clara’s Hidden Journal is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are based off actual events and printed with permission of the living descendents.

CLARA’S HIDDEN JOURNAL: A NOVEL

Copyright © 2021 by Judith Ellen Morris

All rights reserved.

Editing by Alesha Escobar

Formatting & Cover

Design by KP Designs

- www.kpdesignshop.com

The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means—including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Leigh Ann Edrich

For encouraging me to discover

the pleasure of writing.

Many thanks go to my editor, Alesha Escobar,

for her expert advice and suggestions.

Thank you, Jonathan Miller, of iFlow Creative,

for making the publishing process

an exciting co-creation.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to you, the reader,

For your enjoyment.

Inspired by actual events.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

1896: A Los Angeles Traffic Accident

PART TWO

1899: A Traditional Education

Photograph of Clara and Gordon

PART THREE

1911: Two Country Doctors

Photograph of Clara and her Children

PART FOUR

1929: The Pivot Point

Photograph of Marion, Johnny and Anna

Photograph of Gordon

PART FIVE

1942: Doris Rescues Me

Photograph of Clara

Photograph of Clara and her family

PART SIX

1959: Professional Politics and Endings

EPILOGUE

Author's Footnote

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PROLOGUE

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A

fter they returned from their sojourn in Indonesia, Uncle George and Aunt Marion bought a house high on a hillside in Lafayette. Their home seemed to me like a bird's nest, perched up among the oak trees as it was.

In fact, Aunt Marion was also birdlike. She had a broad chest and was gregarious, and in speech and movement she was quick and precise. Her pets were the hummingbirds that came to her feeders and paused in their flight in front of her kitchen window when she was at the sink.

Aunt Marion was the family historian. She had genealogies going back to the 1600s, boxes and boxes of photos passed on to her from my grandmother, and a lifetime of photos, letters, awards, and slides accumulated during a long, happy marriage to a nice man.

How many times have I been here in the last fifty years? How many weekends have we spent going through boxes and albums of family photos together? Quite a few.

After Aunt Marion died at 102, the task of emptying her four-bedroom house fell to her three nieces: Janet, Karen, and myself. We started with a weekend open house for everyone to come and collect the paintings, artwork, and heirloom furniture she left to them.

The following weekend, we returned to a house now showing us its walls, expanses of flooring, and unobstructed windows for the first time. Janet chose to empty the kitchen cabinets. Karen set about gathering up Aunt Marion's photos, letters, news articles about herself and other family members, and general memorabilia.

I decided to box up the books. I started in the den and filled six boxes with books from the waist-high set of shelves under the window and another four boxes with record albums from the closet. Then I moved on to the guest bedroom across the hall where the antique chaise and the 175-year-old, fourposter bed from the Hawaiian Islands were now gone. Only the floor-to-ceiling bookcase remained, anchored to the far wall.

I mounted the step stool and started with the top shelf. As I gently placed the books into boxes, I began thinking about the many guests who had picked out a mystery, a romance, or an adventure story from these shelves and read themselves to sleep, cradled in the luxurious bed.

Now the books could pass to other readers.

On the bottom shelf, I discovered something different…not published books, but journals neatly filling the space next to Will and Ariel Durant's eleven volume The Story of Civilization.

Kneeling on the carpet, I picked up one of the journals. Surprise of all surprises, the journals were written by my grandmother, who had died over forty years earlier. Why did Aunt Marion never mention them?

It could only be that she didn't know of their existence. Grandmother Clara must have brought them with her when she came to live here after being diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. I could imagine my grandmother quietly placing them there beside the bed. Perhaps she was distracted by her illness and forgot to mention them to her daughter, my aunt. On this bottom shelf, the narrowness of the space between bed and bookcase occluded them. In all these years, probably the only person ever to touch this shelf had been the cleaning lady.

I loved my grandmother, but I had spent less time with her than I would have liked. Perhaps these journals would contain answers to the many questions I had failed to ask her. With approval from both my cousins, I scooped up the journals and put them in the trunk of my car.

The sun was setting as I drove north to my home, some seventy miles away. As the sky took on vivid sunset colors, my thoughts went to the journals. Knowing my grandmother for a most private person, I wondered what she would commit to writing…and to what purpose. Would they contain the same reserve she so often displayed in her social relations, or would I find the real Clara revealed in her own handwriting?

It was well after dark when I finally unloaded the journals and settled down in my favorite chair, feet up on a footstool, cup of tea beside me on the lamp stand. The journal I opened first was written during her time as a country doctor, from 1911 to 1932.

Yes, Grandmother wrote what was on her mind and in her heart. Some of her stories and her opinions about those events I had already heard, but others were a revelation.

Next day, a Sunday, I turned off the phone and spent the day with Grandmother.

She was of a generation that experienced a period of tremendous technical development. As a child, she had lived on a frontier and had traveled by horse and buggy. Her children were all born at home and cared for by nurses while she attended to her patients and made house calls in a Model T Ford. She had lived through The Great Depression and two world wars. In her mature years she had an all-electric kitchen, drove a Thunderbird on modern highways, and traveled the world in a jet plane. Yet all of this was only the backdrop to her life and her adventures.

- Judith Ellen Morris

PART ONE

1896: A Los Angeles Traffic Accident

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F

rom the ranch they own in the foothills east of Los Angeles, the Lincolns set out for church just after dawn. As soon as their ranch hands’ morning chores are done, they follow their employers down the hill for a day in town or in the valley among friends.

After breakfast, mother decides to make a fresh pie to take to the Websters luncheon, so we are the last to leave the Lincoln ranch that day.

I step out onto the porch to find Father waiting by the carriage with the hood on it to shield us from the fierce August sunshine.

Come my girl, invites Father, and he lifts me up onto the buggy seat.

Mother is right behind me. She gives him the pie wrapped in a white cloth. Smiling and with a dramatic flourish, he quickly slides the pie under the seat.

You look splendid, my dear, Father says, admiring his wife as if she were on stage. Next, he carefully helps my pregnant mother down the steps of the porch, and she walks over to the buggy and climbs up beside me.

He kisses her cheek as she passes him, and the lines of tension around Mother’s eyes melt away and her tight lips relax into a smile. Mother settles herself next to me on the seat, pats my hand affectionately, and breathes out in a sigh of pleasure.

In one efficient motion, Father climbs onto our one-horse buggy, picks up the reins, flicks them, and the horse starts down the road. The buggy jerks and we are on our way.

From my seat on the bench between my parents, I look out at the immense blue sky over the flat plain of the San Fernando Valley. Farms dot the landscape here and there, on either side of an unpaved road that disappears into the horizon. Exhilaration fills my heart and then rises to become a smile that seems to spread out and include all the space around me.

Like my parents and our friends, I am charged with the pioneer spirit of incipient creation. We live with an eye on the future. Going to the Websters for lunch with a cream pie is no less than a celebration of our dream of filling the valley with communities. Three years ago, this land had been empty. Now we have neighbors only eight miles away, and two more families are building their homes nearby.

What have you got there, Clara? Mother asks after feeling a lump of something on my lap.

I brought Violet along to play dolls with Gladys and Julia.

That’s nice, dear. I am so glad you have some girls to play with now.

You know, it’s not just new homes being built, says Father. There is talk of putting in a stage stop. I hear the place is being called Buena Vista.

At the bottom of the hill, our horse starts to cross a side-track and our buggy is still in the intersection when I hear the hooves of another horse galloping quickly around the corner. Suddenly, there is a man right next to Father.

He’s too close!

I hear the rap of wood on wood as the man’s stirrup bumps our carriage just below Father’s knee, and I feel the weight of the man’s horse against the buggy. The rider glances back at our carriage as he tears by. Seeing that our buggy is still upright, he turns around, leans forward to increase his horse’s speed, and continues down the road toward Los Angeles.

To my left, my father manages to keep the reigns and his seat, but my mother is bounced out of the buggy and lands on the dry grass beside the road on her stomach. She lies there, still and silent. Horrified, we jump down and rush to her side.

Yes, she is alive!

Bring the flask, please, Clara, croaks Father in a voice choked with anxiety.

In a minute, her back leaning against Father’s chest, Mother sips the water, smiles and says,

Ah, thank you my darlings. Shall we be on our way now?

As Mother walks toward the buggy, I see a stream of blood making its way out from under her skirt. Father’s face goes white with fear.

Stay with your mother, Clara, he says. I’m going for a doctor.

Please don’t leave us, Father. I don’t know what to do. Can’t we take her in the carriage to the Websters? I plead, but he doesn’t respond.

This is best, Mother assures me. The bleeding may stop on its own if I lie still.

I sit down so she can rest her head on my lap, and I resign myself to wait for Father’s return. The August sun burns into my back as I shade Mother with my body. I hold her hand and pat her face with a wet handkerchief.

And what shall we name this baby? she asks to distract me.

Well, if it’s a boy… I answer and we spend a pleasant half-hour thinking up possible names, then odd names, then silly names, all to no conclusion. The bleeding does not stop, and the blood pools between her legs and soaks Mother’s skirt.

Don’t fret, Clara. We are in God’s hands. Whatever happens, it will be alright in the end, declares my mother with a faith that has seen her through many difficulties already.

For me, Mother, it will be alright when the doctor arrives and stops the bleeding, and you and baby are well and safe.

Let’s say some prayers, she says and starts to recite the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want… I join her and we recite to the end. ...and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever. Amen.

Mother becomes sleepy. To keep her awake, I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, her hands, again and again, and repeat, Father will be here soon.

After a few minutes I say to her, Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer.

I start to recite it, but Mother does not join me. The sun continues its course toward the western horizon. Mother no longer responds. My words of encouragement are replaced by my cries of desperation as I watch my mother pass away.

****

When Father returns with a doctor, it is too late. Mother has died from an incomplete miscarriage suffered from the kind of hit and run traffic accident for which Los Angeles later becomes infamous.

A funeral for Mother is held two days later at a small graveyard located on an old Spanish rancho. The 23rd Psalm is recited anew and after it the words, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Later that night I ask Father, Why?

I do not know, Clara. It’s a mystery to me, he says. Some things are beyond our understanding. Perhaps we will learn the answer when we are gathered into the arms of the Lord.

After the death of my mother and the little brother she was carrying, my father retreats into his grief, and I am left quite alone, floating through a numbing fog. We have become two automatons existing in a house where a family once dwelt.

My father’s sobs in the night only intensify my grief, and I hug my doll Violet, weeping silently, tears sliding down my face and wetting the pillow.

****

The Making of a Red, White

and Blue American Girl

My mother’s death is not the first and only one in our family.

A year earlier, my little sister Elsa samples the blossoms of an oleander bush growing alongside the house under the parlor window. She throws up the contents of her stomach, but already the poison had taken hold. I watch my parents take turns pacing the floor and holding the wailing Elsa in their arms.

Oh, why did I let her out of my sight? Mother frets.

We had no idea the flowers were poison until I looked them up in my botany book, Father replies.

If I had seen her putting anything into her mouth, Mother adds, I would have stopped her.

That night, Elsa goes into convulsions and dies in Mother’s arms. No matter what Father says, she blames herself for Elsa’s death. I am never again allowed out of Mother’s sight.

To keep me by her side, she entertains me with tales of her life in Iowa. In the afternoons we walk together over to the Lincoln house and invite Andy, their nephew, to come play in our yard. From a chair in the shade, Mother watches over our games.

When my mother begins to suffer from morning sickness, I learn how to light the fire in the stove, put on a pot of porridge and a kettle for tea, and serve tea with crackers to her. After a while, she gets up and does the washing and baking while I sweep out the house.

The fumes from the food make Mother nauseous, so she directs me from her chair out on the front porch as I make supper for us. In the evenings, Father challenges me with arithmetic problems while Mother tidies up. Later, I lie in bed drifting into sleep to the voices of Father and Mother reading to each other from his novels or histories.

****

My Swedish father, Sven Karlsson, is about medium height, strong and spare. He has startling, clear blue eyes that I imagine reflect the north Atlantic sky. He wanted to become a modern American farmer, and his father used an inheritance to pay for his education at Northwestern Agricultural College.

Other than the current news contained in occasional letters from his family, which Father reads to us, translating as he goes along, I know little of his family in Sweden. He never speaks to me of them or shares tales of his boyhood.

My mother, Frances Sullivan, talks to me often of the homestead farm outside of Davenport, Iowa where she grew up. Proudly, she tells me that her family had arrived by covered wagon in 1836 when her mother, Rebecca, was less than a year old. They were among the founders of the community.

One of my favorite stories from my mother is about the Indian who came to tea.

Weary from fighting off Indian raids in the Appalachians, her parents headed west after they had been assured the Indians there were under the control of the Army.

I could imagine their fright when one afternoon young Rebecca answered a knock on the door of their sod house and discovered a huge Indian staring back at her. He was dressed in buckskin, ornaments hanging from its fringes, necklaces on his chest, with earrings in his ears. The middle-aged Indian looked dignified, but did not speak a word of English.

My family's only defense was good manners. Rebecca’s mother, Susannah, invited the Indian to come in and offered him a seat at the table and a cup of tea. No one spoke while he drank his tea. He looked around the room at my grandmother and my mother’s sisters and brothers. After a while, he left without even a sign of a thank you.

They never saw him again.

Rebecca’s child, Fanny, as my mother was called, grew up to be a lovely woman. She was round and plump and had brown eyes and beautiful auburn hair reaching past her waist.

Mother, how did you and Father meet? I ask her one day.

Well, Clara, I’ll tell you. I met Sven at my aunt’s home in Davenport, where he was a lodger. On Sunday afternoons, Sven joined my aunt and her family and they read to each other from a novel or book of poems. Sven was so handsome, and his voice resonated with drama as he read to us in his rhythmic Swedish accent. I was dazzled by him. Sven lent me books to read and we would discuss the ideas in them. He introduced me to a world of heroic deeds and sentiments, beautifully expressed, and these entertained my imagination while I did chores around the farm or sat sewing in the afternoon.

Did you love him then, Mother?

Yes, I adored him. Summers, Sven worked on a wheat farm, and he came to visit me on Sundays. We were never separated from the first time we met, and I never thought of anyone else. After he graduated from college, Sven asked me to marry him as soon as he could save up the money to set us up in a home. I was so proud to be engaged to this clever and ambitious college graduate.

I watch my mother’s eyes brighten as she continues. My aunt in Davenport always looked down on her brother and his family for living out on the farm as we did. I was happy to show her it was no disadvantage and that I could best her in fortune. I imagined Sven and myself one day living in a big white house of our own on a vast wheat farm. Unlike my aunt, Father was delighted. 'You did well,' he told me. 'We must have a proper wedding to launch our Fanny into her new life,' he told Mother. Sven worked for a full year on the same wheat farm and became a foreman. He painted and furnished a foreman’s cottage for us and even saved enough for a honeymoon in Sweden. Would you like to see my wedding dress, Clara?

Yes. Of course I would.

She has it carefully wrapped in a linen sheet in a trunk. I reach down and feel the smooth satin material, so soft and lovely.

Oh, Mother, how beautiful!

One day it will be yours, dearest.

Another day, while Mother is peeling apples in the kitchen, I ask her to tell me about Sweden.

It was a long, cold trip over there by train and steamer. When we arrived, I was glad to set my feet on the good, solid earth once more. Sweden is a land of many islands covered with fir trees and meadows. Every island has at least one fishing village with surrounding farms. The Swedish live well. Their homes are comfortable and each is decorated with painted woodwork and furniture. We were warmly received by Sven’s family, who had not seen their son in five years. Relatives came in by boat from all around the watery world of southern Sweden. They wanted to meet me, visit with Sven, and celebrate Christmas.

Christmas in Sweden sounds like a dream, I murmur.

She smiles and continues peeling apples. The women taught me to make Swedish Christmas bread. In winter, the mornings so far north are dark and cold. The shortest day of the year had just passed, and the people could look forward to the coming of spring and the long days of summer. At Christmas the Swedes celebrate bringing in the light. We women fashioned wreaths like crowns and carefully placed candles in them. On Christmas morning we lit the candles, put the wreaths on our heads, and sang to the men as we brought in the Christmas bread.

Oh, yes! I say, remembering Christmas mornings here.

Those potato pancakes and breads that Sven likes, I learned to make from his mother. Soon, I’ll show you how to make them. When we left, Sven’s mother gave us a beautiful tablecloth with napkins. His grandmother gave us tea towels woven by herself. These fine linens I save in the trunk for special occasions.

****

I am Clara, named after my grandmother Karlsson, and not, as one might think, for the clear blue eyes inherited from Father. I have a thin straight nose, high cheek bones, and a small square chin with a dimple. I am not a classic beauty, nor am I ugly. I guess you could call mine a distinctive face.

My middle name should have been red for my auburn hair and hot temper, characteristics