No Matter What: The Early Years (Volume One)

By David Allen Goodwin

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NO MATTER WHAT

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NO
MATTER WHAT, VOLUMES ONE AND TWO, tells the life story of Dr. David
Goodwin from his birth to his retirement from the mental health profession at
age sixty three.

Goodwins tells
of his difficulty in dealing with his childhood education and his dislike of
academia in general. However, he managed to overcome his early educational
difficulties eventually earning a bachelors degree, two masters degrees and a
doctorate degree.

Goodwin says he
was born with horse manure in his blood and that he wanted to be a rancher and
cowboy for as long as he could remember. He spent much of his young life on
farms and wanting to spend the rest of his life in thestyle="mso-spacerun: yes"> in the saddle.

Goodwin says
that when he was a kid in high school he was privileged to spend several years
working nights as a houseparent at a school for the deaf and blind. He writes
about that experience and says it taught him to be responsible and to have
empathy for others.

Goodwins
written work shares his early efforts to gain a military career and how the
military shaped

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 14, 2003
• ISBN: 9781469116150

David Allen Goodwin

David Allen Goodwin was born in Hayward, Wisconsin. At age six he and his family moved West. He met and married Jenenne Hansen in 1959. Together, they have raised six children and as of this year, have eighteen grandchildren. Dave holds an associate of arts and bachelor of science degree in psychology, a masters degree in history and one in education, along with a doctorate in educational psychology. Dave has worked professionally in the mental health industry for over thirty years in which time he has helped to heal our countless injured. Now retired, Dave has time to reflect back on his years of service. In his two-volume Autobiographical work entitled No Matter What, Dave tells his powerful story of a legacy of hope and healing, giving the reader relished moments of laughter and tears.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

WORLD WAR II AND I ARRIVE ON EARTH

On Mother’s Day, May 14, 1939 my Mom, Violet Helen Markstedt delivered me, her third child, David. David is a Hebrew name meaning The Beloved, and Mom hoped her newborn would live up to his name. I had been a prenatal problem because Mom was sick from the day I was conceived and was sick until the moment I was born.

I was born in a log cabin my Dad built from logs that grew on our farm in Northern Wisconsin. When Dad first saw me he said he thought my enlarged chest suggested I had a birth defect. The doctor told him I was just skinny and that a few good meals would fill me out. At the time, the good doctor couldn’t know that the hole between the two chambers in my heart hadn’t closed as they were supposed to and that I truly was a walking birth defect. I would only know about the defect many years later when it caused me to be taken from this world for eight days.

My mother sprang from Viking stock. Her mother and father, Ida and Ole, emigrated from Sweden in 1900. They entered America through Ellis Island and eventually settled in Northern Wisconsin. Mom was born in Ashton, Wisconsin where she took her place with her two siblings, Harry and Gladys. Her oldest brother, Carl died in infancy in Sweden. The Markstedts moved to Hayward, Wisconsin where Violet grew to be a lovely blonde haired, blue-eyed schoolteacher.

My father, Vernon Wills (Bud) Goodwin, was the offspring of Wilson Shannon (Pete) and Violet Goodwin. Their kin came from Wales via Holland in the 1700’s. The early Goodwin’s were Quakers and they helped settle Pennsylvania. Grandpa Pete was a rover and he hauled his family from Ohio to Iowa, Iowa to Illinois and then to Wisconsin. Pete Goodwin was a fine horseman and farmer.

Mom and Dad were married in 1932 after a short romance. Dad was a dairyman and a freelance bootlegger. He said the Great Depression had deeply impacted his world and that even though the Depression happened in 1929, it did not hit northern Wisconsin until 1932.

Dad said he knew the Germans and Japanese were on the move and that war was imminent. Germany’s Adolph Hitler was determined to rule the world and the Japanese needed more oil to continue their conquest of China. World War II hit with a vengeance as Hitler moved into Poland and beyond. In 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and war in the United States became a reality. I remember Dad being dressed in his police uniform, as he was a guard in a munitions plant. His National Guard Unit was soon drafted and it was to be sent to Australia to fight the Japanese. However, the A Bomb’s ended the war in Japan and Dad’s unit stood down.

The Government borrowed a lot of money to finance the war and most Americans benefited from a war economy. My Pap decided that Wisconsin was just too cold a climate and Prohibition was being repealed so he started looking for a place to go. When I was about three years old, a couple of missionaries from Utah showed up at the door. Their message seemed important to Mom and Dad and the next thing I knew, we were Mormons. Dad took up with some other Mormons in our little town and they worked a lumber mill together. The cold winters didn’t get any better though and Pap decided that the heart of Mormondom in Utah might just be the Promised Land.

Four families joined together, bought a little truck on which the brethren allowed only so much space for each families’ valuables. My Mom sent a desk and a clock her family had brought from Sweden. Other than those items, I don’t remember her having room for much else. Mormonism was tough for Mom because she was a coffee drinking Swede and it was hard for her to give up her coffee. Dad, on the other hand, gave up his hell raising ways and took to theological concepts like a duck to water. He had always been kind of a Bible thumper and when he embraced other like-minded thumpers, he seemed to be right at home.

The move West was uneventful for me. My Dad and one of the other guys belonging to our gathering left for Utah ahead of the caravan to find homes and work. I remember my Mom, a couple of the other women and a passel of kids vying for space in several old cars and the little truck. I remember the big bridge crossing the Mississippi and miles of little gray/blue bushes (sage brush) dotting the landscape. Somewhere in Nebraska we got into a real rainstorm and the families pooled their funds so that they could afford a couple of motel rooms. The owner was suspicious of two men, four women and a bunch of kids all traveling together heading for Utah. He could have only reached one conclusion: Polygamists! I think he let us stay because he was assured that we weren’t putting down roots and we had cash.

By war’s end, I remember taking food ration stamps to the store to buy food. Then, long after the war was over, I saw many a motion picture made during the war that taught me to hate Japs and Germans.

I knew there had been a great war but I didn’t care much. Wars were big peoples’ problems. I saw pictures of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs killing people but the calamity never really invaded my childhood. I heard words like, the Yellow Horde, Japs, Krauts, and Waps, but I didn’t really know what they meant. I had no idea that man could end all life and probably would.

Fortunately, my childhood was couched in things Western. Our move from Wisconsin to Utah cemented my cowboy ways. Wide-open spaces, pines, valleys of grass and grazing cattle were in my blood. The term cowboy meant just that. It referred to the men and boys who could handle beef cows. They slept under the stars and ate their meals from a chuck wagon. They had good horses and usually a good dog or two. My heroes were Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and the Cisco Kid. They wore six-guns and didn’t actually kill people. In the old-time Western movies, villains were shot but rarely died. There were no gaping wounds or chunks of flesh splattering all over the silver screen. Villains just rolled over and played dead. We knew they weren’t dead because they would be back in next week’s thriller.

I hated the first grade and I thought the second grade was worse. Going to school just didn’t seem like a natural act. I knew I would have been better off had I been born in Montana to some cow outfit that would not have expected me to spend my young life in school or church.

The only thing good about time passing was Christmas. When I was seven years old my Mom and Dad gave me a real, metal cap pistol. I don’t recall ever believing in Santa Claus. Mom talked about Santa coming, but I didn’t buy it. I knew she got me the cap gun and I appreciated her for that. After the war, anything metal was hard to come by and I knew my parents had bled dearly to grant me the one and only Christmas present I ever wanted, my cap pistol and holster. I named her Betsy and wore the thing day and night. I remember my Betsy caused me the first real emotional pain that I can remember. I was in the second grade struggling to cope with academia and people. It was a warm spring day and I was waiting for the bell to free me from what had been hours of pain and suffering. Because there would no doubt be bad guys waiting on the playground itching for a gun fight, I thought I had best get old Betsy loaded and ready for action.

After all, no one had ever gotten the drop on me and I had a reputation to protect. It took a lot of gun slinging to earn the name, Whitey the Kid and I didn’t want to lose out on account of an empty six-gun.

I didn’t mind being nicknamed Whitey because I had a shock of platinum blond hair that stood straight up and was about as unruly as the body that carried it. My platinum shock rivaled Trigger’s mane and could only be managed by pulling my ever-present cowboy hat well down to my ears.

The school photographer tried to plaster my hair down so he could take my picture without the hat, but to no avail. So, like a gift from heaven, the hat stayed. I was proud of the picture because it was the real me. And, I was the only kid in the school who got away with wearing a cowboy hat for school pictures.

As the minutes slowly ticked by, I slipped on my western hat and was sitting restlessly at my desk fingering my pistol. Mrs. Palmer didn’t seem to notice my preoccupation with Betsy who I had secreted in my desk. Or, perhaps, she was just letting me have a little space. Mrs. Palmer was a fine looking women and a pretty nice teacher too. In fact, she was one of the few teachers I thought might have liked me just a tad.

At this moment, however, I was preoccupied with the approaching gun battle. While other students were sitting quietly in their desks waiting for the 3:00 o’ clock bell to ring, I was busy with my shootin’ iron.

I had slipped Betsy from under my desk top and was easing the paper caps up behind the hammer when, and to this day I don’t know how it happened, my dang thumb slipped off the hammer causing tons of dynamite to go off in that very quiet class room.

The problem with red paper caps was, besides being loud, they were made with black powder. When detonated, a cloud of white smoke, smelling like a runaway garbage fire, filled the air confirming an explosion.

After my explosion, white, acrid, sulfur smoke curled up past my red face, hiding me from the frightened world that was all around me. As the smoke cleared, I saw Mrs. Palmer scampering down from about half way up the back wall with the look of death on her lovely face. I don’t think we had real, genuine terrorists in our little town, so I don’t know why she thought she was going to die, but she looked like that’s what was on her mind.

After collecting her composure, her facial expression changed. She was still red in the face but her demeanor, which had been full of fear, switched to plumb mean. Upon spotting my smoke cloud, she made a beeline for my desk. I knew I was pretty much history but I wasn’t about to let anything happen to my Betsy. I quickly slipped that offending iron back into the top of my desk and waited for the storm to hit.

Give me that thing! Mrs. Palmer screamed as she tore at my desk looking for explosives.

I bravely jumped on the desk lid protecting Betsy but Mrs. Palmer already had her long, painted fingernails under the lid. Unfortunately, after I came down on the lid, she didn’t have her lovely fingernails anymore.

By now I knew I was in real trouble and I wasn’t anxious to fight on. Mrs. Palmer soon had Betsy and me firmly in tow heading us towards the principal’s office.

The rest of the class took the whole thing pretty well. A few of the tougher kids even managed a snicker or two as Mrs. Palmer used my ear as a handle to escort my red face and quivering body out the door.

The second big bang of the day came when Mrs. Palmer slammed the classroom door shut and marched me to the principal’s office. I don’t remember Mrs. Palmer taking time out to make an appointment with the boss, so when she threw his door open and stood there with a poor, pathetic little cowpoke in one hand and shiny Betsy in the other, I think it took him by surprise.

Principal Edwards quickly recovered from our blatant intrusion into his afternoon and calmly asked Mrs. Palmer about the reason for her urgent visit. After she explained how I had tried to kill her and my classmates by blowing up the school, Mr. Edwards dismissed her leaving the two of us alone in the room.

I was sure his excusing Mrs. Palmer was a good move on his part because he didn’t want any witnesses to my mutilation and subsequent death. I remember well this great huge bulk of a man turning his large cumbersome chair around so that he could look directly into my eyes, which were peeking up out of my shirt. Well, Bub, he said, you want to tell me about this?

At this point in our one-sided conversation, I really didn’t want to talk about it much. I had just about had a dose of the whole thing and would just as soon have lit out for home. To get the conversation off center, I just stammered a little and then, with a much restrained tear or two, I explained how I didn’t want to kill anybody and that the whole thing was an accident.

Then, much to my surprise, Mr. Edwards started to relax a little as I told him about how after my blast Mrs. Palmer just seemed to stand still in mid air. Mr. Edwards got a little grin on his face, not one that I was supposed to see, mind you, and at that moment, he passed sentence on Betsy and me. I was going to have to leave my six-shooter at home for a month, which I computed to be six thousand years. And, I had to apologize to Mrs. Palmer.

It was true that I was going to miss Betsy for a while, but there was no bloodletting going on here, so I quietly accepted the penalties and was grateful the crisis had passed. I didn’t realize at the time that the law of mercy had won out over the law of justice and that’s why I was permitted to live.

As I turned to leave the office and feeling much better about the mess I was in, I thought I saw a pair of real, genuine cowboy boots that had been worn many a time, hanging on the end of Mr. Edward’s long legs. At that very moment, I knew why my life had been spared. Mr. Edwards was a cowboy. He was a brother, a fellow cowpuncher. He understood the urgency of being prepared for a gunfight and he knew that I must live to fight another day.

My apology to Mrs. Palmer went well and she was even quite forgiving considering the circumstances. In fact, I don’t recall that she even held a grudge.

School ruined about five days a week but did not intrude on Friday night or Saturday. I would like to have had school on Sunday rather than on Thursday because church was just like school so the day was shot anyhow. I didn’t like those Sunday school classes that kept me penned inside church walls and I knew most of my God-fearing Sunday school teachers wished that I had stayed home.

One of my teachers, Mrs. Olson, tried to bribe me into better behavior by suggesting that if I would behave in class, her pilot husband would take me up for an airplane ride. I had never been in an airplane before and, at first blush, the ride sounded like a good idea. Then, after thinking the proposition through, I realized Mrs. Olson had described the airplane ride up in exact detail but had said nothing about the trip down. I could just see this big pilot dude unloading his wife’s problems at about ten thousand feet, so I declined Mrs. Olson’s offer.

On Friday nights, my dear old Dad gave every kid within shouting distance the nine cents that it took to buy a ticket to the Schubert Movie Theater. My pals and I spent many hours watching Roy Rogers or Gene Autry clean out nests of vermin that were always trying to do someone in.

Even though World War II was over, a few patriotic theater manager always slipped in a war movie or two that showed our American soldiers being killed or killing someone. The war movies didn’t sit too well with the cowboy patrons because in war pictures the good guys got killed too. None of us appreciated seeing the good guys go up in smoke, so we tried to confine our theater time to movies about things Western.

Dad got rid of a lot of noise for nine cents a head. And, even though he was generous to a fault, I don’t think his movie contributions were totally philanthropic. He was grateful that he could let us spend a night at the theater without worrying about what was on the screen. In fact, I don’t think there were more than a half dozen Western movie scripts ever written. For next week’s motion picture the producers only had to change the scenery every now and then so the good guys could ride again.

In the old time Westerns, the good guys were always good guys and the bad guys never changed either. Even if the bad guys happened to get knocked off this week, you could bet they would be back in the Coming Attraction.

Western movies portrayed every kid about my age as having a horse or, at least, finding one on the open range. In our valley, there wasn’t any open range left, so I leaned so hard on Dad about my need for a horse that he finally caved in. After my constant prodding, he announced that he had bought me a horse. He said my horse was a hundred miles away and that he would send a man and a truck after the critter as soon as he could.

Experience had taught me that when an adult said, as soon as, you could bet it meant when things were convenient. Convenient meant the time frame for action could string out to the Millennium and beyond. I had learned about the word millennium in church. It seemed to represent a time in the Hereafter that most churchgoers were sitting around waiting for. That kind of an arrangement didn’t suit me well at all because I didn’t want to wait for my bronc until the Millennium. So, I put a little more heat on Pap to get my hay burner home immediately, if not sooner.

I don’t think Dad had any illusions about being a cowboy because he had worked in dairy processing plants for most of his life. Cow manure and such only spelled trouble for him and the state dairy inspectors.

My Grand Dad, Pete Goodwin, however, was one of the best horsemen in northern Wisconsin. Dad talked about Gramp’s horses with a lot of pride, so he may have had a road apple or two in his blood in spite of his white clothes and disinfectant.

Anyway, for Dad to send one of his squeaky clean dairy trucks after a horse was way above the call of duty. In fact, I remember our dairy plant being cleaner than most people’s houses. Everything in the plant was eventually introduced to soap and hot water, so for Dad to allow a scuzz bag of a horse to be crammed into one of his mobile petri dishes, was real proof of what he thought of his cowboy son.

Dad’s as soon as possible was as he promised. After a few days, he asked one of our hired men, Oscar Blair, if he would mind taking me to get my horse. Oscar agreed, and within an hour we had the old Studebaker milk truck flying down the road heading for open range.

CHAPTER TWO

LITTLE RED AND OSCAR BLAIR

As far as I was concerned, Dad couldn’t have asked a better

guy than Oscar to head up the expedition. Oscar was one of those rare individuals who could talk to a kid without talking down to him. Oscar was slim and fairly tall. He had a leathery face and deep blue eyes. His smile was more of a grin that just slightly exposed his store-bought teeth. I really liked Oscar and I think he liked me.

Oscar was a bachelor type who lived by himself in a little tarpaper covered trailer house out behind the dairy. He wasn’t the best housekeeper in the world, but I liked that in Oscar because it validated my own housekeeping skills. On many a quiet night Oscar invited me into his trailer for a visit, which was one of those visits where no one talked much.

Oscar smoked home-mades or roll-yer’-own cigarettes, which meant he always had a little white sack of Bull Durham smoking tobacco jammed into his right shirt pocket. The sack, which was about the size of a baby calf ’s ear and looked a lot like one, had strings at the top for closing the bag. A little round paper disk was tied on the ends of the strings so the smoker could pull the sack shut with his teeth. Oscar always had that little paper disk hanging out of his mostly red-checked, flannel shirts.

When he decided to have a smoke, it seemed like more of a rest period than a smoke break. Oscar usually announced that he was taking a rest break, then, he’d hunker down some place comfortable and start the smoking ritual.

First, old Oscar’s eyes would kind of glass up and he would get this certain look of satisfaction on his face. Then, from somewhere in his shirt pocket, Oscar retrieved a little packet of very delicate white papers and the backie sack. Oscar would slowly curl one of those little papers into kind of a trough arrangement, pull open the backie sack with his teeth, and then gently sprinkle tobacco shards into the trough. Then, quite methodically and without apparent thought, he would take hold of the paper disk with his teeth, pull the sack shut and stuff it back into his shirt pocket.

After the out-of-the-shirt-pocket and back-into-the-shirtpocket phase of the ritual, Oscar would hold the partially rolled smoke in his left hand and, with his right hand, gently bump the paper trough leveling the tobacco with the edges of the paper. Now came the neatest part of a roll-your-own, because the guy doing the rolling had to run a little bead of spit down one side of the paper. The spit held the whole thing together, keeping the shards where they belonged. I guess the spit had a few more advantages because you just didn’t ask a guy for a drag on his smoke.

Oscar was a real professional when it came to the spit part, because a slouchy dude who couldn’t do it well usually got the thing so wet that it fell apart in his hands. If the spit part went well though, the final move was to tightly twist each end of the newly made smoke to keep the backie in the paper and not in your mouth.

I really liked the part where Oscar twisted the ends because that meant he was about to light up. In those days, matches were made of wood with a large blob of sulfur on the tip. When struck, the flash resembled a forest fire and could get pretty hot. So, when Oscar put the flaming match to the twisted end of his smoke, there was a real fire. Sometimes, the rapid burn let the little cherry burl in the end of the cigarette drop down into Oscar’s red, flannel long johns. When the smell of smoke and burning hair finally interrupted Oscar’s meditation, he would come up out of his hunker and commence fighting fire. By then the fire was usually raging deep down in his long johns making it difficult to reach the flames.

I always got a real kick out of the fire and burning hair and was sorry when Oscar took up with tailor-mades. (Store bought cigarettes.) I think in Oscar’s later years he became impatient with the time it took to make roll-yer’-owns, so he switched over to tailor-mades out of pure convenience so had more time for meditation.

I thought Oscar was a heavy thinker because he took time out to do it. There was many a night when we would sit in his little trailer with the oil furnace cranked up to about ninety degrees while his old record player blasted his favorite song, Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women, out through the cool night air.

It was my job to start the record over each time it ended. We would play the same song for hours on end as Oscar sipped coffee and rolled cigarettes. I never knew what Oscar was thinking about so hard because, as I said before, these visits were the kind of visits where you didn’t talk much but just sucked up the atmosphere and enjoyed the music.

I think, every now and then, Oscar got a little lonely for the ladies. He never talked much about women or indicated that he missed them. He said I lost my two front teeth because I whistled at the girls too much. I responded by asking if that was why he could put all of his teeth in a glass jar by his bed at night? A slight grin, neither confirming nor denying my accusation, was his only response.

When Oscar needed feminine company, he’d get a little restless and had kind of a far away gaze in his eye. The gaze signaled loneliness and Oscar would head for Nevada. After a few days he’d come home with a pretty satisfied smile on his face and he didn’t seem quite so agitated anymore.

After one such disappearance, Oscar arrived at the dairy with Miss Rosie, a painted lady, on his arm. He hinted that he either had married her or was going to marry her but no one knew which scenario was the case.

When Miss Rosie moved in, I was moved out. I guessed Oscar found better things to do with his evenings because I wasn’t invited in anymore. It was quite a rejection and I knew Rose was responsible for terminating my visitation rights. After all, who would want some little blond-haired kid around asking questions and wanting to hear Rye Whiskey over and over again?

After awhile, I think Rosie out did herself. One day while she was cleaning Oscar’s trailer with all the vengeance of a street sweeper after a parade, she went too far. When I saw that Rye Whiskey record hit the burn pile, I knew there was going to be hell-apoppin’.

That afternoon Oscar arrived home after a tough day in the dairy plant. He walked into that newly cleaned trailer, turned around, and walked right back out. Come on, Dutch, he said to me. We’re goin’ for a ride.

And ride we did because I was driving and I was in no hurry to get back home. There’s just something about a ten-year-old kid getting to drive a big truck that sends joy through his soul and burns unforgettable memories into his mind.

After a few miles, Oscar had smoke rolling out of the windows and I had dust billowing towards the heavens. Oscar had a determined look in his eye that promised change. I had a grin on my face that suggested I was more than ready to return to my place at the record player. A few days later, Rosie was gone. I was pleased.

Now, on my go-get-the-horse day, Oscar and I were blazing into the sunset to get my new bronc. I was at the wheel and Oscar was hunkered down into the seat with a store bought smoke hanging on his lip. He looked pretty content and he didn’t seem lonely at all. I hoped his next trip to Nevada would just be some kind of a social event and that he wouldn’t drag anything home like Miss Rose.

After what seemed to be a drive forever, we arrived at a little farm that looked like it was still trying to recover from the great depression and WW II. The farmer was all bent over and didn’t look much better than his farm. He looked like he should have died long ago, but was hanging on so that the bank wouldn’t get the farm.

After Oscar palavered with the farmer for what seemed to be about three days, we finally walked around a little broken down barn. There, much to my dismay stood a matted-eyed, scrawny, little creature. It looked a lot like the pictures of prisoners of war we used to see in newsreels slipped into our cowboy movie afternoons.

I remember thinking, damn, because this critter sure didn’t look anything like Trigger. He obviously wasn’t going to be a problem to get into the truck. Well, I thought, maybe he just needs a bit of work and a little feed and then he’ll come round.

I was glad Dad wasn’t along for at least a couple of reasons. The first was if he had heard me think damn, he would have let me know about it even though I was now a man among men on the Western frontier, standing in manure up to my boot tops. Secondly, I don’t think he ever would have hauled that bag of skin and bones home.

I knew from stories past that Dad had spent some of his youth in southern Illinois working race horses, real thoroughbreds. He would have known that this varmint of mine would never see a track.

I never thought of our dairy trucks as being large even though it took a long time to unload all those milk bottles when we delivered milk from door to door. But, when we got that Idaho desert mustang loaded into that truck, I had to admit the truck looked mighty big and the bronc looked mighty, mighty, small. With all the optimism of a young cowboy though, I knew that with a lot of care and a little feed, my horse would someday run with the best of horses and might even make the movies himself.

I didn’t know how Roy Rogers came up with the name of Trigger for his horse or how Gene Autry conjured up the really neat name of Champion for his trusty steed. But this horse of mine was a Red. So Red he was, and Red he stayed.

As the old truck lumbered down the road for home, smoke rolled from the windows as a little horse water drizzled from the back of the truck and splashed onto the highway. The trip home went by very quickly. Oscar drove so I could spend more time getting to know Little Red.

Little Red was too small to ride and too big to carry, so the two of us spent the summer running the hills. Red took a real liking to grape Popsicles and through the summer, he sucked down enough grape Popsicles to have turned himself blue.

I soon figured out that if I hooked a rope to my bike and then slung a loop around Red’s neck, that we could fly like the wind. As we sped down the gravel roads with rocks flying up into my face, I spent more than a little time praying that the bike would stay upright. I knew how quickly rocks could dump a bike, and with the fence posts going by too fast to count, I was well aware that if I ever went down, I was going to leave a heap of skin all over the road.

There was something about Red and me leaving a cloud of dust scurrying towards the heavens that made the whole thing worth it. Living on the edge, was a way of life and I hoped the time would never come when a neighbor had to tell Ma to close the outhouse door because her youngn’ had just been killed in a horse-bike accident and would never be coming home.

Red didn’t grow much that summer in spite of all the Popsicles I shoved down him, to say nothing of all the milk I thought I had stolen from the dairy. I say thought, because I learned later that Dad knew all about the milk, but didn’t care because he was rooting for Red and me. I think he knew something I didn’t, but he wasn’t saying anything bad about Red.

As winter approached, I felt bad about Little Red. He was still little and our date with the movies seemed to be a long way off. I didn’t feel too bad, though as I had a horse while most of my pals didn’t. Having Red qualified me as a real cowboy and another year would make everything better.

That winter, just before Christmas, on a cold southern Idaho night, my Little Red, lying in his stall, couldn’t get up. Oscar said Little Red had spring halter and that meant he was paralyzed and that he would never walk again. Oscar said Little Red would have to be put down, which was a nice way to say shot. Oscar, being a matter-of-fact kind of a guy said he would take care of it and he sent me to the house. After that, I wasn’t sure that I ever wanted to be a cowboy again. I felt pretty bad about being off to church with old Santa celebrating Christmas while paralysis took Little Red down. Santa gave me a bag of nuts and candy with an orange as a topper but he couldn’t do a thing for my little Red.

It was great having a horse but it was mighty tough to lose him. I guess the Sky Chief has a way of easing a kid into pain, hoping the experience will grow him enough so that he can cope with big people problems.

I sure wanted to cry over that little horse and did some. Oscar seemed to know how I was feeling and invited me in for some company and music. He even offered me a roll-yer’-own. I took it and lit up. I knew mom would have had a fit about my smoking because it sure didn’t go along with my upbringing. This night, however, was an emergency requiring desperate measures. Besides, I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to finish it off anyway.

I healed some from little Red’s loss but as time and age kept gnawing away at me, I never lost my intrigue with things historic and Western. I just wanted to be free, to be left alone.

CHAPTER THREE

MISS KRANK

Grade school gave way to higher education and I somehow

managed to move into the seventh grade. I think my Mom’s ties with other educators had a lot to do with my promotions. Also, I think the idea that a teacher could get rid of a pain-in-the-butt kid after nine months had its advantages.

I suppose the education system had some kind of a formula to make sure that a teacher who flunked a kid did not get the kid back again the next year. I remember a number of kids that were quite routinely flunked and by the time they got to junior high, they were bigger and meaner than most of the teachers.

A little old maid, Miss Krank, ruled my junior high days. She was a traditional principal with traditional ways. I saw her as being very old but not very Western. Somehow, someone must have tricked her into living in the sagebrush and lava rocks that cluttered the windblown, sandy desert that I called home.

It wasn’t that I disliked