Observations and Reflections of a Country Squire

By George C. Zidbeck

George C. Zidbeck is the author of a six-volume collection of stories focusing on family dysfunction as a result of parental alcoholismcreative fiction based on the true events of his life.

In Observations and Reflections of a Country Squire, Zidbeck recounts his life story and considers the lasting effects of his early years on the rest of his life. After spending those early years in the American Canal Zone in Panama occasionally getting into trouble, he found himself moving to California with his mother and siblings in an attempt to start a new life after his father left to join the Merchant Marines. As a teenager, Zidbeck continued to learn some things the hard way when it came to growing up, enlisting in the US Army at the age of seventeen. He served during the Korean War, was hospitalized for hepatitis, and was then honorably discharged in October 1952, thus beginning his life as a free man in Long Beach, California. Thereafter his life required constant adjustment from his earlier ways, presenting challenges of paying the bills, finding love, and trying to decide what he truly wanted for his future.

In this memoir, one man offers a candid description and exploration of the events of his life, reflecting on the many changes and bumps in the road over the years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491785669

George C. Zidbeck

George Zidbeck graduated from UCLA with a degree in anthropology after spending four years in the US Army. He then spent twenty-five years working as a probation officer for Los Angeles County. George and his wife, Judy, then retired in Atascadero, California, where he later published a six-volume saga about family dysfunction as a result of parental alcoholism.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 George C. Zidbeck.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8565-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8566-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901991

iUniverse rev. date: 3/29/2016

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Running in Circles Trying to Find Someone Who Can Say What Life Is All About So That Maybe I Can Say What I’m All About

PART ONE: DEAR ONES

Dear Reader:

Dearest Judy:

Dear Mom:

Dear Dad:

Dear Rick:

Dear Lucille:

PART TWO: EARLY YEARS

A Dog Named Whitey

The Tale Of A Novitiate Baker

My First Friend: Bill Dorgan

Catching, Eating, & Reflecting On Grasshoppers

Cockroaches

PART THREE: ADOLESCENCE

Awaiting A New Friendship

Friendship #2: Richard Hall

Maturity Part One

Maturity Part Two

Animal Husbandry And Growing Up

Sex, Sex, Sex … The Questions, The Futile Searches …

The Growth Of A Pool Hall Habitué

Major Changes Afoot

A Goat Named Suzie

PART FOUR: ADULT YEARS

Mariko-San

Starry, Starry Night

Houses

What’s In A Car?

Acquaintances

Remembrances Of Jobs Once Upon A Time

Apologia

Tale Of A Novitiate Baker: Part Two

How I Came To Be A Country Squire

Neighbors

Hospitals

Friendship #3: Edgar Brossman

Friendship #4: Ron Pellet

Der Koffee Klatsch

Privies (Skip To The Loo My Darling!)

Vanity

Pura Vida

County Fair

Panameña, Panameña, Panameña Mia Vida

Lakota Lady

Stones

Rochester

PART FIVE: OBSERVATIONS & REFLECTIONS

The Story Of Caruso The Rooster

Yellow Jackets

The Squirrel And The Hawk

Stick Insects

The Coyote And The Fawn

Feathered Impudence

The Doe That Hated Dogs

Poison Oak

Coming Up On Springtime

Life And Longevity: A Few Words About The Living And The Dead

Theology & Philology

Opinion

PART SIX: AGING ON THE SQUIREDOM

The Wayward Walker

Aging On The Squiredom #1

Aging On The Squiredom #2

Aging On The Squiredom #3

A Paean For Judy

My Obituary

About the Author

I

dedicate this book

to my tireless editor and confidant,

Anna Sirkka Gilmore Johnson.

Foreword

RUNNING IN CIRCLES TRYING TO FIND SOMEONE WHO CAN SAY WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT SO THAT MAYBE I CAN SAY WHAT I’M ALL ABOUT

Somewhere between learning to tie my shoelaces and mastering the multiplication tables, I laid down one new-moon night on the grassy field of an empty baseball stadium near my home. The absence of artificial light or moonlight allowed the Milky Way to fully claim its title. Without my knowing about galaxies, an awesome wonder overcame me. Over subsequent decades that original mystical moment shrunk after learning that the Milky Way of my youth represented nothing more than a minor elliptical dot amongst multitudinous galaxies rotating thousands upon thousands of light years distant.

Sadly, definitive answers on the origins of dust and space lurk in the mysteries of dark matter. Meanwhile, mankind stands by with far too many questions and damned few answers. Even the most famed astrophysicists worldwide, building upon the theories of earlier learned scientists, continue reformulating theoretical constructs. Massive atomic colliders might give us clues. But how many clues and at what rate? What’s next? To my mind, even with all of our impressive advancements, we are no better off than Newton watching an apple fall and thus pondering gravity. Well, we do know more about apples today than earlier centuries, but we still don’t know that much about gravity. Bad enough when astrophysicists chase their tails now and then. Brain researchers using different research machinery presents similar conundrums. And philosophers argue just as heatedly today as ancient Greeks over what we know and how we know it.

Are we getting close? I’m skeptical. Sometimes I compare our sciences with Mark Twain’s experiment. First he put four animals (two predators; two prey) in a secure cage, making sure they were each well fed and watered. He checked on them hours later and they were all alive and relaxed. Next he put four, well fed, healthy religious men of mixed faiths in a different pen, and discovered the next day they had killed one another. Humorous yes, but also descriptive of current events …

We send missiles, manned and unmanned, into space. For what end? We are already on a spaceship. What will we do when we find humanoids infesting a sister planet two hundred, three hundred, or a thousand years from now, but their frontiers have been long closed? And if mega advanced cultures exist out there somewhere, how much confidence do we have that we can decipher languages bordering on the metaphysical? If future earthlings do meet a distant planet and it mirrors our biological evolutions, what will we have gained? We’ll then have to start from scratch in searching for other life form variations that might replicate in unfathomable processes.

And let’s not talk about cloning. We’ve already seen that a clone of a clone of a clone eventually results in near total idiocy and a reduction of instinctual responses. That’s like starting kindergarten with E = MC2 and eventually winding up with a doctorate in simple arithmetic.

Oh, George, stop! What are you doing with such ramblings? Don’t you understand that complex solutions seldom fall comfortably from the frontal lobes of our brain’s grey matter? Relax; don’t waste your time. Leave the scientists to investigate the human thinking processes and present certainties across the board. In time, such researchers might then easily explain to one another soon thereafter to us re: who we are and what we’re about. Oh, okay … No need to worry at this point about people knowing much about themselves. I mean, look at us. Look how far we’ve come in just a few thousand years. Easy to see that everything is simply swell. Hunky dory you might say. (What’s that? You want to know why my tongue extends one cheek?) But, you’re right. I’ll back off from asking any more questions. Besides, I don’t have access to any research lab.

In earlier generations, more than one person considered the notion that genius is the norm. I used to think that aphorism had substance. Today I suggest that genius comes in kinds and degrees and that excellence in one major does not always transfer to another. For example, an architectural wizard might be tone deaf with a limited capacity to determine or evaluate all aspects attaching to music re: pitch, sharps ‘n flats, major ‘n minor keys … I’ve met a few learned people who have earned multiple degrees in more than one discipline, but show incompetence in some ordinary activity like pruning trees. Therefore, let’s set genius aside and investigate plain day-to-day behaviors of every single life form. Now, there’s a spectrum, a variable scale built on differentials that establishes the DNA genome as a veritable mishmash.

What a place to stop, having defined myself as an unpredictable mishmash. Except when I look in a mirror and smile, the following thoughts emerge: Damnit, George, you’ve been drawn, quartered, and ostracised, but -- still -- you’re all right. Yep, you’ve put enough things together to where your bio-system falls in the plus column in the here and now surrounded by good friends and neighbors. You live comfortably in a cultural and physical milieu offering unlimited bountiful amenities. And even if unable to leap tall buildings in a single bound, you may announce to all maidens out there who find themselves in difficult plights to give you a call to rush to their aid! You and Don Quixote, both on Rozinante. GIDDY-YAP!

PS: The world already has too many maybes.

Part One:

DEAR ONES

DEAR READER:

Looking back on my 84 years, I reflect on how I could:

… Move about without any physical or mental distress most of the time.

… Step into any social gathering without concern for my reception.

… Shrug off past embarrassments, miscues, nine hospital admissions, one rib fracture twice broken, addictions, infidelities, and one jail booking; not from any indifference, but from my learning not to repeat such egregious matters that fall within my conscious ability to do otherwise.

… Laugh over most mishaps shy of wincing, lingering pain. My loudest laughs relate to dropsies, stumblebumbling, and forgetfulness. My motto? Deprecate thineself with humor and selflessness.

… Enjoy discarding one and all past uncertainties and failures while keeping intact all laudatory events.

… Admire my fanatical desire to read, to travel, to absorb all cultures, and to extract meanings from the smallest mass to the most distant black hole.

… Hold fast to all of life’s experiences, from the least to the greatest that exalted me at no expense to my fellow earthlings.

The above listing may not define the totality of who I am and what I’m about. But, close enough is good enough. Nevertheless, whatever stars and awards that attach to my mantra, one remains to be told, and it best explains the one influence that outweighs all the others combined in making me the person I am today. Her name: Judy.

Born Wilma Jewel Anderson June 9th, 1927 in Colorado, she became my wife on April 23, 1955 in Palos Verdes, California. My beloved died on August 10th, 2010 of Emphysema. We muddled through five and a half decades of marriage that included anger, despair, and even bouts of separation. You might ask, how can such a union that included such elements now be presented as a loving relationship?

Let me explain. For six months a heinous angst brought on by unending grieving magnified by melancholic intestinal twistings, I could not shake such feelings. Stuck in a dark hole, I felt surrounded by boogey-men and howling banshees. Sleepless nights followed sleepless nights. A letter from hospice, almost six months to the day of my wife’s death, referred to how survivors commonly miss the presence of departed loved ones. Yes, most certainly, I missed my wife’s presence. I made an appointment with a hospice counselor. Shortly thereafter my recovery began.

I can today, with comfort, quote Judy’s sentiment expressed but hours before her final breath: I love you, and I know you love me. That’s all that matters. It might be said that my re-entry into the land of the living remained a work in progress for some time. Yet, each morning after my morning’s ablutions, I would look into the mirror, smile, and say thank you. Yes, Thank you Sweetheart for enduring my blunders and for exemplifying love and friendship even to this day. In your memory, I’ve included much of the story of our life together.

I now invite you, Dear Reader, to walk by my side as I recap the sometimes nitty-gritty, but always enlightening past.

younggeorge.jpg

The eight year old lad above welcomes you to his stories. Please enjoy. If you don’t like the book, don’t tell me.

DEAREST JUDY:

I had first thought of closing this work with a letter defining our love. I realize now that the following are not my stories even if I did live for 24 years before our marriage. It’s hard to determine where to tell your story, what to include, and how much to say, because in my mind I could fill ten books with our story. You were a poor Texas girl mainly from the panhandle. You had a tough life. Your mother died when you were very young and you lived for a while in an orphanage. You were pretty sure you had tuberculosis as a child, and your family members were mainly cotton pickers after your father remarried, albeit he did run a gas station now and then. You maybe finished the 9th grade although you said you finished the 10th, which I doubt. You had three older brothers, two older sisters, and a younger sister to whom you became dearly attached for the rest of your days. Your real name was Wilma Jewel Anderson, and her name was Jean (which she didn’t like all by itself and you both changed your first names; yours to Judy, hers to Diana Jean). You had a limited work experience at an ice cream parlor in Perryton, Texas in the upper panhandle but ran away with your seventeen year old cousin to California during WWII to make a new life for yourself. You there met a sailor to whom you became engaged. After the war, you two went to Yuma, AZ to get married. He then took you to his home in Cleveland where you had a son who was born seriously disabled with a condition called Moebius, plus club footedness along with fixed cross-eyedness.

The marriage did not fare well; you felt he blamed you for the child’s physical handicaps. So you returned to California with your child and rejoined two old friends on the coast while planning for divorce. You soon obtained work as a waitress, got an apartment, a babysitter, and relocated yourself to the west coast. Plus, you acquired a divorce attorney.

At that juncture I met you at a western dance hall in Gardena, CA. You smote me, beyond words. True, we later broke up, but it turns out neither one of us wanted that and a few months later we were reunited. On April 23, 1955 we tied the knot at the Glass Church in Palos Verdes, followed by a honeymoon in Laguna. Two days later, we settled in for the duration (till death do us part.)

True, Judy, I was not fully the husband you might have expected, but notwithstanding my flaws and occasional infidelity, you’re the most dearest thing in my life. I had no friend I could trust more, no person to whom I would offer more. You were my dearest love, and remain so even after your death.

I can’t thank you enough for the many virtues you displayed and shared with me, from ceramics to leather working, canning, and knitting (many socks). Our life took numerous turns, the biggest one likely was our getting into archery, which you loved beyond measure. In fact, you were a far better archer than I, but not as good at hunting. I was the one who brought home the wild game, albeit you did shoot a wild goat on Catalina Island once.

Because I cannot say everything I’d like to say in these letters, I’ll likely write letter PS’s here and there, so reader beware.

PS: When I referred to your archery ability and your getting a feral billy goat on Catalina Island, I didn’t take the time to explain that our club, the South Bay Archery Club, Inc., had a sub-club for those members who hunted big game. A fellow male archer told you that women could not join the big game club. Not a wise thing for any man to tell any woman what she can and cannot do. Therefore, you started attending some of the club’s organized hunts on Catalina Island, where, at the time, one could hunt feral goats and pigs. It took you three trips to finally bring down a billy goat.

We had a staging area where hunters met to be driven back to camp. I met you there and you told me of your kill. I went back to the carcass to obtain the meat when I noticed the testicles were missing. The carcass was too heavy for you to drag back to camp whole, so you took proof of your kill the easiest way possible. When we unloaded back at camp you immediately went to a table where five big game members sat, members who had killed elk, caribou, antelope, wild pig, and peccary in their hunting history. You then threw your two testimonial testicles on the table and told the men there seated, There, now tell me I cannot become a member of the big game club. You were very proud of that moment, and rightfully so. I watched the scene equally proud.

judyheadshot.jpg

In that words fail me when describing my wife, her beauty and her talents, I just want you to take a glance at this picture of Judy and after you’ve read this story, take another glance and look at her eyes.

DEAR MOM:

Yes, I know I’m talking into a void. After all, you died over fifteen years ago. But I’m not the first person to take pen in hand to write to the departed. Now that I’m well into my eighties, I speak from a different perspective than those years when you were my mommy and then Mom; I never called you mother. Not that it matters. What counts are those incidents that marked how I reacted to you as my mother.

As your first born, that status put a lifelong mark on my forehead. Strange in retrospect my being number one of four children. You were the first of four girls born in 1910 of a Panamanian mother who married a Swede who worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal for the Americans. You felt you were the favorite of your father, Charles Seaberg, and missed him much when he was terminated as a helper in 1917, and went to Mexico to seek employment in the Tampico Oil Boom. Soon thereafter, your mother received a telegram that he there died of Black Fever.

Not long after, your mother married your father’s American supervisor, a man named Gus Adams for whom you held a lifelong hatred, a hatred likely justified. Your sister, my beloved Aunt Georgia, also spoke against the man: haughty, autocratic and given to extreme punishments, mainly having his young wards hold a broom over one’s head until he said it was okay to let it down. Aunt Georgia corroborated the man’s dominations, sharing with me in later years how she had to go to the bathroom, but he insisted she stand in place with that cursed straw broom over her head until she peed in her pants.

As I grew older, Mom, you enlarged such tales, including how you had no intention of marrying Dad, but he had a car (a Model T) and his parents lived next door to where you lived in Pedro Miguel. True, he was a machinist’s apprentice and lived in bachelor’s quarters in Balboa, and you became acquainted when he visited his parents and enjoyed the rides and the ‘dates’ to see some movie shows on weekends. But Mr. Adams let you know you had to be home by 9:00 PM. Then, one night, you were only a few minutes late and he wouldn’t let you in the house. You were ready to finish your junior year in the American all grades school, and had no intention of dropping out. Yes, you had many relatives who lived in Panama City. Nevertheless, you desired to remain in the Canal Zone. To do so, you accepted Dad’s offer of marriage just prior to your turning 18 in June when school ended.

Oh Mom, Mom, Mom … Yes, I’m here because of the above circumstances, but if I were never born there’d be no me, and your adolescent dream of becoming a concert violinist might have been realized. I give you credit for trying to make the marriage work, for trying to be a decent mother when you found yourself with three children in rather quick succession. But, Dad was an alcoholic from the get-go. True, a passive drunk, one not combative or loud, who still managed to work his daily shifts. Plus, the Depression stateside imposed minimal financial hardships on Isthmian Canal Commission employees and their families. Consequently, you lived well compared to your national brethren in the new República de Panamá.

Many wives of U.S. caucasian employees routinely hired maids from the black communities, but not you. On one occasion, when I was maybe four years old, you had a problem with one who wouldn’t leave unless you paid her a dollar, and you refused. When Dad came home, he made sure the woman left without the dollar. You did not eagerly employ another maid. For years afterward, I recall tender moments with your mothering my two younger sibs and me. Even now, in retrospect, you may well have, at the time of your marriage, committed yourself to your role as mother and homemaker. When the family vacationed to Costa Rica in 1936, you filled photo albums with countless Kodak box-camera shots. Yeah, there was one tense moment when Dad came back from an excursion to a volcano and had a bad gash on his forehead. He said a horse kicked him, but you had no doubt that he drank too much and fell off that horse.

Not too long after our return home, we moved from the Atlantic Side on Cristobal to Balboa on the Pacific side. Not that we were one big happy family, but anxiety and tensions were at a minimum. Canal Zone authorities designed expansive neighborhoods with numerous amenities. We sat as a family at the dining table for supper, and ate well. You cooked with competence, Mom, and I still wish I could fix your arroz con pollo. And thank you for letting me help you in the kitchen to where you encouraged me to learn some basics. I saw first hand the magic that went into meringue and seven minute icing.

Come 1939, eleven years after you married, our family of five (my baby sister not born until 1943, more on her later) took a three-month’s vacation to the States. Oh, the wonders, starting with our taking a Canal Zone ship from Cristobal to New York where Dad bought a 1937 Chevrolet before motoring from New York to California by way of the northern states, and returning to New York via a southern route.

During the trip west, we stopped at a farmhouse in Iowa where your sister Sophie’s in-laws lived. During that stop, dad got the farmer drunk and that event became my first recollection of you and Dad having a serious squabble. By the time we reached the west coast, you had settled down, and all went well until we returned to New York for the trip back to the Canal Zone. Dad got drunk once again, and I sensed your angst and despair for days afterward.

Once we returned home and moved into newer, improved quarters near the all grades school, the main library, the clubhouse and movie theatre with med clinics and post office close by, I can look back on nearly a year where our family life could be called hunky-dory. That’s the first time I heard the phrase about Dad staying on the wagon.

Too bad he fell off the wagon, more