One Old Lady's Journey: Part Ii

By Boni Kennelly

This is the story of one old lady who traveled the world. We find out how Bonnie dealt with childhood, childbirth, finding love, losing love and finally finding love again.
God has always been an important part of Bonnies life. Without her belief in something greater than herself, she would not have survived.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499048391

Boni Kennelly

The author is a retired street artist - working first in oils, then watercolors; painting scenery and American wildlife. She switched her media to clay many years ago. Bonnie sold her art at street shows all over the country for many years, concentrating on the Midwest and Southeastern states. Some of her work can be found in exhibits in hospitals, some in private collections, and a lot of it probably in your homes. Bonnie is the mother to five wonderful children, mother-in-law to another bunch of great people, grandmother to seven beautiful grandchildren and great-grandmother to two. She has been a lover of dogs, cats, flowers, people, and most living things all her life. She has hiked in many countries, and many states. She has broken a few hearts, and probably a few laws along the way. She was a single mother for many years. She is a sister, an aunt, a cousin, sometimes a Catholic, and always a believer in a Supreme Being. She has never met a stranger and believes there is good in everyone.

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Copyright © 2014 by Bonnie Kennelly. 612213

ISBN: Softcover   978-1-4990-4838-4

          Hardcover   978-1-4990-4837-7

                EBook   978-1-4990-4839-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any

information storage and retrieval system, without permission

in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual

persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 08/25/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

Contents

Introduction

Childhood

My Teenage Years

Estes Park, Colorado

College

Marriage

Divorce

Life After Divorce

My House – In Pictures

My Travels

Key West

Hawaii

Appalachian Trail

Greece

Guatemala

Amazon River

Italy

Asia

2009 Update

I’m 80

Christmas Letter 2013

Feelings

Introduction

T he other day I was lying on a table in the Neurology department of our local hospital having an EEG, which is a brain wave test to find out if you have something up there that doesn’t belong. We have already established it is pretty much empty of brains.

I was telling my life story to the nice 40’s something man that was running the test. I have a habit of telling parts of the story to people I don’t know; people you don’t know don’t judge you (your story is safe with strangers) . . . . unless, of course, you are telling a story of crime. By the way, I am over 75 years old; there is a lot to tell.

Going back, there I was having an EEG to find the demon that was causing my seizures/dizzy spells. And, of course, making friends with the doctor running the test. He found my story so fascinating that at the end of the test (he kept two patients waiting after the test was done to hear the whole sordid tale) he suggested I should write a book.

Well, I had started writing a book seven years ago when the person I loved more than anything died (at that time, it was a tale of fiction so as not to piss off the innocent bystanders who are a part of it). When my friend died I just sort of set it aside and went on with my life.

When I am busy sharing my life story with total strangers (this is a quality some of my children hate), I discover everyone has a story; that story is their life. We all have a story, one that is unique to us. That is important to remember, some of us tell that story to total strangers, some of us share that story with a psychiatrist or some write books about it (two of those apply to yours truly). My grandmother told me when I was a very small child that everyone has one good book in them, that book is the story of their life. So here goes, here is my life story.

I ask you not to judge but to listen. The part I shared with the EEG dude is the most colorful part, but not how it all started. This is the whole tale. Grab your seats folks, it is gonna be a bumpy ride.

First, I am going to tell you just a little about my growing up years.

Childhood

I was born 77 years ago, two days after Christmas in an apartment above a drug store in a part of Indianapolis called WI, or the west side of Indianapolis, across from the Chevy plant. It was two days after Christmas 1932, the middle of the depression. My father’s partner had invested their money in the stock market; they had lost everything in the crash. We were very poor (hey, don’t feel sorry for us, everyone was poor). Unfortunately, my father could not find work; my brother tells me he had been a traveling shoe salesman when our parents were first married. Mother may have met him in a dance hall as she loved to dance. After he lost his job he gave up looking for a time (it is said until I was born), spending a lot of hours at his mother’s drinking coffee.

My mother had only gained five pounds during her pregnancy with me- maybe because she could not afford to eat, who knows. My parents had moved from the house they had occupied on North Illinois Street when my father was employed, now we were living in a tiny apartment. (Karl thinks we lived in a house, but he was only 18 month old when I was born, so I am not sure he really remembers). Eventually my father went back to school and became a pharmacist. He attended Butler Pharmacy School which at that time was located near Irvington on the east side of Indianapolis.

The night of my birth the doctor, a family friend, was at our house for dinner. Apparently I had been due to arrive two weeks prior. My mother cooked dinner then lay down because she wasn’t feeling so good; her water broke, she had no pain, and suddenly this beautiful five pound baby was in the world. Really, she says it was that easy; with my older brother she had been in labor many hours.

She always told me if you don’t get the pain at birth you will get it afterwards. Don’t let it be said I didn’t do my best to make my mother’s life less than ideal. When my parents married, mother was looking for security. My father was eighteen years older than mother, she had grown up in a home with 8 siblings, her father died of what they called consumption (T.B.) when she was nine years old. Her step father had also fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately when my father lost everything, a lot of his good nature went away. My mother’s life was difficult.

After my father finished pharmacy school he worked for a bunch of different drug stores. The one that sticks in my memory the most was the Emerson Pharmacy located at 10th and Emerson in Indianapolis. As a very young teenager I worked in a few of those pharmacies behind the soda fountain making sundaes, sodas, and fountain cokes. One summer I worked at the Linder Ice Cream store in Irvington and managed to squirt whipped cream on the chemistry teacher from my high school when he came in with the biology teacher.

From my earliest memory, my grandmother Martin (mother’s mother) lived with us. My mother grew up in Brazil, Indiana, a small town near Terre Haute. She was part of a very large family. She had six sisters and one brother—her brother met an untimely death at 19. My grandfather, Morgan, was born in 1872. He worked in the local clay factory and passed away at 46, as I mentioned before, from TB. Grandmother Martin, who was born in 1873, married again to a man named Elmer Clark. That marriage ended in divorce after a few years. Grandma had gotten ill with appendicitis and infection set in, so she was in the hospital for a while and bedridden. During this time, my Aunt Rosie saw him out with another woman and told Grandma. She divorced him and never spoke to him again. Elmer had been married three times before Grandma and two times afterwards; being faithful was a problem he had… During both of her marriages, she worked as a cook in the hotel, also sewed dresses for the little girls in the town, always making my mother’s shorter than she should. During prohibition, Grandma also made bathtub gin—running the flag up the pole as a signal when it was ready. Mother quit high school before graduation, going with her sister, Flo, to Indianapolis (or Terre Haute) to find work and have fun. For a while they worked in a cigar factory rolling cigars. When my parents married, mother was living with her mother on the west side of Indianapolis; I suspect Flo lived there also but am not sure.

Our family moved around a lot. I don’t know when my family moved from the west side of Indianapolis to the east side; it must have been right after I was born. The first five years of my young life was filled with all kinds of mischief…

When I was about two years old (so the story goes) I was found naked on the street one Sunday morning as services were getting out at the Tuxedo Baptist church on Grant Street (it was a few doors from our house) on the near east side. No one could figure out how I had gotten out of the house.

We had a lot of other relatives living with us as we moved from one rental house to another. My cousin Betty Ann came to visit often with her mother. Sometimes, off and on, they lived with us. She was the same age as my brother. When I was about three, Betty Ann and my brother told me to pick up a bug—it was a bee. I have been allergic to honey bees ever since. Grandmother Martin put raw onions on the bite, to draw out the stinger. I am sure she punished the bad guys, grandma was in to spare the rod, spoil the child.

Often Karl and I would walk down to the Baptist church, where I had made an earlier appearance as a stripper, to slide down the cement banisters. We always got into a lot of trouble for doing this; grandma was very liberal with the switches to the legs. One day I decided to pick some of the flowers out of the planters out in front to bring home to my grandmother, she loved flowers. Grandma Martin told me it was wrong, and not to do it again, but she thanked me for the flowers – and she was smiling, something she didn’t do very much. I just knew something that made my grandmother smile could not be that wrong. So of course I did it again; the very next day I went back to the church and picked a few more. The reaction that time was not what I had been going for. My grandmother spanked my little legs all the way back to the church where she told the minister I would not do it again, and then spanked my little legs with a switch