Bob & I

By Glynrose Young Friedlander

Glyn and Jim didnt meet until their early 40s, and on the rebound from failed marriages. Interest turned into liking, friendship into love. A warm, adult love. After many years, they began writing together, for each other and for family and friends.

Glyns autobiography written in her 80s and now published posthumously, tells about a vital, wise, and intuitive girl and covers her formative years. Her parents an irresponsible, incompetent roguish cop father and loose mother, were both hard-drinking products of the Roaring 20s, Flappers, the Charleston and all that Jazz. Raised in small towns of the Depression afflicted Middle West, Glynrose Young developed into a responsible, mature young lady of strong character, uncompromising honesty, with ambition and consideration of others. The venue changes to the great American Southwest, but constantly in the background loom the Great Depression and World War 2 casting their shadows on Glyn and her generation.

Even as a toddler and not even knowing the word, she could sure spot a hypocrite and pledged herself not to become one. Her fine qualities she attributes to the influences of chance, near-strangers, relatives, neighbors and friends. But most of all.. to Bob. Bob, the gentlemanly family dog was an American Staffordshire Terrier mix, commonly known as a Pit Bull. Born almost the same time as Glyn; they were brought up together. Dogs, as we all know, mature so much faster than we mere humans. And die so much sooner. Bob, seeing his job well done, left Glynrose 73 years before she went to join him. But he left his stamp on her for the rest of her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514476086

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Copyright © 2016 by Glynrose Young Friedlander.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016904426

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5144-7606-2

   Softcover   978-1-5144-7607-9

   eBook   978-1-5144-7608-6

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Rev. date: 08/08/2016

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Graciousness

Introduction

Chapter I Mama, Papa And I

Chapter II Bob

Chapter III Papa

Chapter IV Mama

Chapter V Some Other Relatives

Chapter VI I Digress

Chapter VII Summers With Grandma

Chapter VIII Will Papa Ever Learn?

Chapter IX Gertrude And Pat Wigal

Chapter X Dunking In A Dirty Cow Pond

Chapter XI The New World

Chapter XII Settling In

Chapter XIII Childhood’s End

Epilogue

DEDICATION

We who knew and loved her, dedicate this memoir to she who will always remain in our hearts,

its author

GLYNROSE DARLENE YOUNG FRIEDLANDER

A VERY PERSONIFICATION OF GRACIOUSNESS

Who, had she hung around just a little bit longer, would have undoubtedly nominated, instead, her guide, companion and mentor,

BOB

pt7

Bob And Glynrose Darlene Young

Both at age three

FOREWORD

O n August 27, 2013 at about 2:00 p.m. on a bright, sunny Tuesday, my telephone rang. It was from Cindy, Glynrose’s youngest daughter. Mom is very sick. Come to Midcoast Hospital as quick as you can.

Cindy was never an alarmist, so I took her very seriously. I no longer drove, so I called for a taxi. All the cabs are out on jobs, said the dispatcher, I can’t have one for you in less than a half-hour. As rattled as I was, I didn’t think of calling on a friend or neighbor. I simply tried to convince the dispatcher that it was an emergency. But to no avail. The cab didn’t arrive for over 50 minutes. Five minutes later I ran, as fast as old legs could carry me, up to the desk in the hospital’s main lobby.

I asked for Glyn’s room number. The receptionist paused, then dialed some digits; and after a few words with whoever was at the other end, asked me to sit down and wait for a guide to accompany me. I protested, I don’t need a guide. She’s in Emergency. I know where THAT is. Please. Just tell me the room number.

Their dilatory routine was not customary in ordinary emergencies, even at Midcoast, the larger of our town’s hospitals nor in the other where Glyn’s primary care physician and cardiologist had their practices, I waited impatiently for my supposed ‘guide’ in the almost certainty that Glyn had either died or had been admitted to Critical Care. My wait seemed like hours.

A lady in nurse’s uniform finally came over to me and suggested that we go to Glyn’s room. She died, didn’t she? I sensed that my guide cringed slightly. They don’t like to use the word die in hospitals. They lose people in hospitals. They prefer euphemisms like passed, left us or simply went.

The nurse nodded.

At the door to a room she said, I will be waiting just outside in case somebody needs me.

Who needs YOU? I thought. Perhaps if she didn’t keep me waiting so long, I might have been there in time for one last word.

I then entered the hospital room. Cindy and her three adult daughters, the ones still living with her, were gathered around the bed tearfully. Glyn was propped up, with tubes still attached, her face frozen in a grimace. Tears came to my eyes, too. This was the end of our 42 year marriage. I felt dreadful but also angry with myself and with the circumstances, in general, for not getting me there in time for a final kiss. An embrace. That one last word.

Glyn’s death was no surprise. It came suddenly. It was unexpected. But not a surprise. She was, after all, 86 years old. She had had several heart attacks in the recent past and had been weak and sickly for much of her many years.

Rheumatic fever as a young child and then a second bout only a year later left her with a heart murmur. Then, too, she became seriously ill with a lung infection that required her to fly home from Mexico to Albuquerque for immediate surgery, still somewhat experimental. She was only in her early 20s then.

A young doctor performed the surgery. This procedure came before the common use of antibiotics; she lost the use of a lobe of one of her lungs, thus further weakening her.

Fifty years later, she noticed that the same doctor was surprisingly still in practice. She called to thank him and to tell him that she was still alive and thriving as the result of his service. He remembered her and was grateful for her praise.

Getting back to Glyn’s death, she’d been out for a restaurant brunch with the ‘girls’, returning home just an hour before she was heard asking for help. She expressed no sense of pain or discomfort, just weakness. She was lying on the bathroom floor when the ambulance crew arrived only a few minutes after the girls dialed 911.

At her request and specific instruction, there was no obituary but just a short death notice a few weeks later, no funeral service, no cortege. Glyn, a very private person, did not believe in a soul or an afterlife or a god in the common understanding of him or her as an omnipotent, omniscient being. She was an atheist who agreed with Voltaire that god, as most people envision him, is a creation of man in man’s image: for most true believers, an old man with flowing white beard and wrapped in a Roman style toga.

With no consistent heavenly or ecclesiastic guidance as a child, or even parental example or influence, but, mostly the unwelcome and differing influences of virtual strangers and relatives. She was gifted with a demanding and personal set of values which emphasized honesty, empathy, personal responsibility, self discipline and the love of life, be it her own or life in general. With the latter came an unusual ability to communicate with animals, both wild and domestic.

People who knew Glyn well often commented on how remarkable her life had been, especially in view of the places, people and times that molded her. She was full of entertaining or exciting anecdotes that impelled all who knew her to beg her to set her story to paper. I’m not that important, she’d say. Or, I’ll get around to it.

And, indeed, she did, but unfortunately not soon enough. Upon her death, we found four legal-sized pads, exquisitely written in her almost calligraphic Palmer Method handwriting, but chock ‘a block with marginal notes, additional thoughts appended to the back side of the page, corrections and revisions. These manuscripts, edited by others as minimally as possible, constitute the guts of this, her story, but only up to her early adulthood. That’s as far as she got with her memoir, but it makes for a story all by itself; and what a terrific story it is!

Reading through her manuscript, I came to realize that Glyn mentioned people, places, things, events about which younger generations might have difficulty in understanding. I was tempted to explain them in footers or asides, I have come, instead, to realize that younger readers were probably much better at that sort of research than I.

So I looked them up on Google, and Wikipedia. They were all there. So there was no need for me to explain who Sally Rand was or what a speakeasy was.

I DID want to put Glyn’s life in geographical, historical, social and economic context where Glyn may not have done so herself, although she often DID so in her own way. My efforts are mostly in the Introduction and Epilogue. The latter touches upon some of the events that she would have been so much better at detailing, herself, and thus more fully describing her life. However I have omitted many, many anecdotes that most readers would prefer in her own style and in accordance with her memories.

I must reiterate, this is Glyn’s story; so. if you want to skip my additions as superfluous, that’s OK. I’ll never know, and my feelings aren’t easily hurt anyway.

Jim Friedlander

Acknowledgements

I t is difficult, considering all the assistance we received in putting this, our first entire published book, together, to list all our many supporters in any particular order. Without the help of all of them, this memoir-plus would never have been compiled at all; with the absence of any one of them, it would have turned out a far different story. So here goes:

To my friend, guru and comrade-in-arms, Sergeant (ret.) Renée Chevalier, USA, for her trying to teach me, however unsuccessfully, how to use a computer even as to its very basics: and for forgiving my failure, as an old dog, to learn new tricks. And, not just incidentally, for editing the book.

To Maxine Conant, herself a novelist and poet, Annette Hardern and Janice Peter, sisters, and all of Belén, New Mexico, thanks a million for their memories of life in years-ago Belén; for their remembrances and tales of years gone by, as close to the Belén of Billy the Kid as to that of today; and intimate tales about the Conant clan and life on a southwestern ranch. Thanks, too, for passing us on to others whose knowledge of specific incidents or situations might have been more thorough or timely than our own.

To another friend and advisor, Melinda Gale, who nagged me to keep my nose to the grindstone, and who so frequently had to remind me that this story is Glyn’s and not mine.

With gratitude to Ira Whitlock of St. George, Utah for filling us in on a part of Glyn’s past about which we knew very little other than that she loved him and had accepted his proposal of marriage. Ira later became the Department of Interior’s liaison with Congress and a Bishop of the Mormon Church’s stake of Virginia. He remains living proof that there are still a few progressives left in Utah as evidenced by the occasional letters which we were privileged to read in his hometown newspaper.

To Robert Kaneshiro, Herman’s son, who gave us the great news that Herman is still alive at 90, living alone and both able and willing to drive himself up to Albuquerque, 35 miles away, when the mood strikes him. Thanks, too, Robert, for that great portrait of your Dad in the uniform of the United States Army in which he served during and after World War 2.

To Wanda Conant for sharing her recollections of Ken, several of his tales and other speculations; and to Tom Kuenster of Laguna Niguel, California, Ken’s admiring nephew, who as a youngster sat at Ken’s side to listen to stories of World War 2 and about Ken’s life and adventures in old Mexico. Some of those stories may have been true and others not, but at this time and distance, who can tell?

We are indebted, too, to Megan Wallace for cheerfully translating Glyn’s manuscripts and marginal notes into the text that constitutes the heart of this book.

To Andy Andrews of the North Lee County Historical Society for the pictures of Fort Madison but most of all with his own remembrances which he shared with us in our several long and very pleasant conversations about the Iowa that Glyn described.

To Mary Hahn of the Eastern Valencia County (NM) Historical Society and the Belén Harvey House for the pictures and book of Belén and some pictures of Belén’s once young people that she provided us, for her warm toleration of our frequent nagging and, especially, for putting us in touch with the Kaneshiro family.

To Merlyn Amidei of the Macon County Historical Society in Macon, Missouri for photographs of Elmer, pleasant conversations, a correction or two and general assistance to our quest. By the way, yours is an excellent website,

To Raphael Philipson, my English teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School. Ray turned out scads of great writers, good journalists, photographers, playwrights and journalistic business men. Think of James Baldwin, Ralph Morse and Paddy Chayevsky. (Also me)

Ray never ever let us ever forget to NEVER split an infinitive or use a conjunction to end a sentence with. And ALWAYS to use complete sentences. I would never have dreamed of violating any of these rules.

Not whilst he was doing the grading, anyhow! We students used to have a little game. Its object? To violate as many as possible of Ray’s strict rules of grammar in one sentence while still making sense. I suspect that Ray secretly knew about and enjoyed our diversion. Better than gunking up everything with graffiti or breaking store windows!

Thanks again, one and all.

And most of all, thanks to Glyn for, well, just for being Glyn.

GRACIOUSNESS

By Glynrose Young Friedlander

W hat I like the most in others is a rare and probably innate quality that I find irresistible. It has a name: Gracious ness .

I looked for its definition in my dictionary and found many attempts to describe it. Webster offered me a buffet of words from which to select, but none would really suffice. I could fill my plate with kindness and courtesy, tact and delicacy, charm and good taste, or merciful and compassionate."

All those were right, but none were quite adequate, not the elusive, I don’t know what. Finally, I choose generosity of spirit, and that with all the other delicious phrases, satisfied me.

I became aware of graciousness as a child when I sensed that some of the people in my life had an indefinable quality that made them somehow larger in character than most others. I admired them greatly and was very safe and secure with them.

Some were young, others old, men and women, rich and poor, some well-educated, others unschooled. The common quality they shared was their sensitivity to others, their graciousness.

Graciousness! When I’m privileged to witness it, I recognize it as a virtue, which ennobles mere mortals, transcending self, in a lovely way, truly a generosity of spirit, that makes our ordinary lives a little more sublime.

pg23

INTRODUCTION

Times and Places

W ay back in the Foreword, I promised, threatened, to put Glyn’s memoirs into geographical, social, economic, historical and even political context.

So, let’s start.

The lives of people are shaped by the times and places in which they live as well as factors unique to them, as individuals: the genes they inherit, their ethnic identity, their experiences.

Times

Times nowadays are often described, quite arbitrarily, in terms of generation, ages or eras: The Millennial Generation, The Greatest Generation, Generation X, The Roaring Twenties, The Gilded Era, and so on. The Dark Ages, The Renaissance, The Age of Reason, The Industrial Revolution. These names are not necessarily agreed upon and are used strictly as a matter of convenience.

Generations, ages and eras often overlap. Different time periods can and do co-exist and influence one another, both positively and negatively. Sometimes, a given period of time garners two or more names depending upon which people are affected and how so. An era, an age or even a generation might occur at different times in different places and, in some places, not at all.

Whether these labels stick or not will often depend upon how their accomplishments, social doings and their behavior are regarded or perceived by succeeding generations.

These time periods are often defined by the behavior and activities of only a small portion of any population: the 10% more or less, who lead or act up. The activists, the writers and artists, the musicians, the explorers, the orators, the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the educated and the educators and even the criminals.

A generation, ranging between 20 years, say, and 50, normally manifests itself by change, whether peaceful or not, rebellion against the past or a mass refusal to obey the rules laid down by one’s parents. Change comes at different times to different places. By its very definition, the Industrial Revolution has not yet come to many Third World countries. And one sometimes wonders whether the Age of Reason will ever strike certain parts of the United States.

Successful revolutions, these days, be they political, social, economic or any other kind sufficient to warrant a name, rarely occur or begin in agrarian country sides. Urban areas, where large numbers of people congregate, exchange ideas or gripes, attend institutions of learning and experimentation -- THAT’s where to go, if you want to foment any major change to how lives are lived.

So now let’s go to the times, the places, the people that molded Glynrose Darlene Young.

Glyn was born towards the end of the Roaring Twenties in a small Midwestern town. Her parents were much affected by the changing life styles of that period: Progressivism and Prohibition lived side by side. The result: subsequent heavy drinking, flaunting of the law, carefree attitudes, revolution in sexual behavior, silliness and all that Jazz. Her grandparents, on the other hand, were products of the American Victorian Period or, from a different viewpoint, the contemporaneous Gilded Age.

Her two living grandparents also exercised, mostly by example rather than a heavy hand, great influence on Glyn’s development. They, themselves were brought up in this era of extreme difference between rich and poor, although they appeared to accept their lives of both poverty and propriety, Neither Grandma or Grandpa lived near enough to anyone from the highest strata to feel the difference. In cities, a poor man could walk past the mansions of the very rich on the way to