PoPo

Grandpa met Flo in California. She was a salesgirl of 35 in a fancy ladies ready-to-wear. She'd never been married, so never did have any children of her own. After all raising Daddy was a new experience and then there were always the times they had Ila. Life turned around for Grandpa with Flo. She made a real successful businessman out of him, from used cars to real estate he always did well. In their later years, they did a lot of fishing, especially in Arkansas where they loved to drive. They also loved baseball and having me come to visit when school let out for the summer. Mother would put me on a bus. The driver would take me to Los Angeles and drop me off with instructions to get on the streetcar. At the end of the streetcar ride waited by grandpa and PoPo. I somehow made Po out of Flo when I was little and she was forever my wonderful PoPo until the day she died from a broken hip back home again in Boise, Idaho. My summers at Grandpa and PoPo's were full of baseball games, shopping for me, fishing and Grandpa making popcorn in the evening. Popo loved to curl my very short hair with her curling iron and I loved sleeping in the big bed in the spare bedroom with the pink satin comforter.

I thank God Mom had PoPo in her life, someone who would treat her special and take her shopping when her own mother made her wear feed sacks to school and loved her beer more than she loved her children. Mom loved PoPo and went to visit her in Idaho many times when I was a girl.
When I was 12 years old Mom took my brother and I on a Greyhound bus to Boise and we spent a week with PoPo. That was quite an adventure. It was a 3 day trip. In the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere the bus hit and killed a horse. We had to wait for hours for another bus to arrive and take all the passengers on the Boise. The photo above was taken on that trip. From the left are PoPo, her sister Muriel, me and my brother Gary.

The last line of her entry brings tears to my eyes because mom always loved to brush my hair and curl it with a curling iron, even when I was well into my 30s. She gave me a permanent wave every few months when I was a little girl. One of my last memories with mom is brushing her hair in the hospital as she lay dying from cancer. As you can see in the photo above taken 3 weeks before her death with my stepdad Frank, she still had hair in spite of all the chemotherapy she had been given for 2 years, but as I brushed her hair in those last days, it came out in clumps in the brush. I cried.

Running away with the circus

Daddy had a dreadful childhood. He was a sickly child. When he was 9 years old his mother ran away from the husband and two children. She ran away with the circus. Actually, she was swept off her feet by a carnival barker and lived that life for many years. Grandpa struggled to keep his little 5-year-old Ila and Daddy together. He was a proud man, a stern man. Daddy remembered when his mother finally returned there was a big fight so he hid under the kitchen sink. He remembered to the day he died his mother's words, "I'm taking Ila, you can have Jerry. I don't want him." Life in Idaho wasn't easy in those days and soon Grandpa packed he and Daddy into the old car and started out for California. Daddy's only love was his books. He always read a lot. He thought he could read all the way to California, but Grandpa got mad at him for having to stop too many times to go to the bathroom and he grabbed all of Daddy's books and threw them out beside the road.

I can kind of see why mom's grandmother would run off with the circus after being married to an abusive husband, but how could she leave her children behind? No wonder my grandpa became an alcoholic. He was probably trying to medicate his pain. Mom stayed close to her Aunt Ila, pictured above, until Aunt Ila died in the 1980s. She was an alcoholic too, as was her daughter who was killed by the disease. Aunt Ila died of Lou Gehrig's disease. I remember she was dying in the hospital in the Sacramento area and mom drove all the way up from Southern California to be with her and to try to give her the courage to have the life support disconnected. Her lungs had quit working and she was so afraid of suffocating to death. Whatever mom said to her, a few days later she had the machines disconnected and passed away. I was so proud of my mother.

Santa Monica Pier

Mother loved the beach. She loved to swim in the surf, but one time I'll never forget. She'd been drinking her beer and there was a rip tide. She was screaming for help and somehow I went into the surf and helped her struggle back out of the water. I thought my mother was going to drown that day. My Daddy never liked the ocean. He wouldn't swim and was terrified of water since his father had thrown him off the Santa Monica Pier when he was a teenager. "Swim", he yelloed, "Swim, it's the only way you'll ever learn how," and somehow he managed to swim to shore.

This sounds like child abuse to me. When I was a girl mom took us to the Santa Monica pier almost every week in the summertime, so I am very familiar with how far of a drop it is to the water. I'm glad that mom loved the beach because I have lots of memories of good times there body surfing, building sand castles, and riding the carousel on the Santa Monica pier, pictured above. In those days, nobody had even heard of sunscreen. I came home sunburned and sandy every time.

Adultery

Mother had her ways of coping. She drank too much beer too and she had a man friend. He was Italian and he owned the liquor store. I remember one weekend Mother and I took the tent and went to the beach where there were lots of rocks in the water. If you lifted the right rocks you could find baby octopuses under them. I found that thrilling. There were lots of Italian people there and mother's friend. It was the first time I ever tasted duck. They cooked it over an open fire. I liked the shrimp better. Mother slept with her man friend that night. Later, I remember Mother and Daddy had a big fight when we came home and Doris' mother was there with Daddy.

How awful! It sounds like adultery took place on both sides, with mom as a witness. Remember Doris' mother was a prostitute. No wonder there was a big fight, undoubtedly fueled by lots of beer. Mom's parents shown above approximately 1934.

Beer and the Butcher Knife

In those days when we went out to eat it was always in a beer bar or did we just happen to eat there because our parents were there drinking beer? Everybody drank lots of beer in those days. I hate the smell of beer to this day and have never tasted it. I always thought the beer was to blame for everything bad that happened. Like the time my Daddy chased Gene down the dirt street with a butcher knife in his hand or the times when Mother and Daddy would have those terrible screaming fights or when Daddy caught the couch on fire from his cigarette when he fell into a drunken stupor. One night at my aunt and uncle's house, Daddy smashed his fist right through a wall when there was an argument.

How scary for mom to be raised in an alcoholic and even violent family. She had to learn to grow up quickly and take care of herself because she couldn't count on her parents to do it. Her dad died when I was a baby, but her mother outlived her. I remember when we would have family get-togethers my grandma would drink too much beer, and mom would be so embarrassed by her behavior. She always got emotional and weepy when she drank too much.

Animal Shows with Doris

I remember acting not so responsibly one day when my friend and I stripped all the oranges off the orange trees in our yard. We walked all around the neighborhood selling oranges and then we split the profits 50/50. Mother was furious. How could we sell her oranges and my friend get half the money?

This friend, Doris, was always coming up with some childlike ways to make money. We had a large front porch across the front of our house. We would sell tickets to our neighbors for 5 cents and we'd put on a skating show or a play or sing and dance. They must have liked it. They always came. One time Daddy set up the old tent Grandpa had given us on the front lawn and Doris sat inside reading palms and telling fortunes for a price. We had animal shows with our dogs, cats and farm animals. Sometimes we'd get other kids in the neighborhood like the Zovacks next door to join in our performances, but no one was a ham like Doris, who peed her pants every time she laughed too hard, and we did a lot of hard laughing. A strange thing about Doris, she was gang raped when she was 16 and then married one gang member who tried to stop it. Doris was illegitimate and raised by her old grandparents. Her mother was a prostitute and would sometimes come around. I remember she had pretty red hair and lots of jewelry, and she took us out to eat in a bar sometimes.

I have met many of mom's friends, but I never knew Doris. Even though her childhood situation was a sad one, Doris sounds like she was lots of fun. I'm proud of mom for being her friend and I know she must have been very supportive when Doris was raped. I hope Doris' life turned out well.

Above is a photograph of mom in her roller skates around 1940. She loved to roller skate and even knew how to skate backwards.

Killing Chickens

It was bad enough to kill a chicken. I was in the 4H Club and the chickens were my project. I had to feed them, collect the eggs and occasionally kill and pluck a chicken. Daddy made me a place to do it near the chicken pen. He put 2 nails about 2 inches apart in a 4x4 board. I would put the chicken's neck between the nails and then bend the bent nails around, trapping the chicken's head. I would then stretch the chicken by pulling on its legs and when I got the neck good and straight I would chop off the head just behind the nails with my little hatchet. It was important to have a bucket of boiling water ready at hand to immediately dip the chicken into while still holding it by the legs. It wasn't so easy though as the chicken without a head was flopping around furiously as though trying to escape. After it was dunked for only a few seconds, because we didn't want to cook it, I then hung it from the two nails in the fence post by its feet, once again turning the bent nails to hold the feet while I pulled all the very hot feathers off the poor bird. These were good lessons in responsibility. The chickens were my responsibility.

I cannot imagine how traumatic it must have been for a young girl to kill those chickens. My chickens always come from the grocery store. I see where they get the saying, "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off." Mom was certainly taught to be responsible from an early age. That is why she taught me the same lesson, but my responsibilities were more mundane like cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming, doing the laundry and dishes. I had to wash dishes every day before I was even tall enough to reach the sink. I remember standing on a step stool to do the dishes every night. We never did have an automatic dishwasher, although some of my friends did. Nor did we have a clothes dryer, so I had to hang the clothes outside on the clothes line after the wash cycle finished (at least we did have a washing machine!). Then when the clothes were dry I brought them inside, folded them, hung them in the closet, and ironed dad's shirts with a steam iron, even when it was 100 degrees, which was quite often in Southern California. We did not have an air conditioner for our small house, but when I was a teenager we finally did get a swamp cooler which cooled the living room, but not very effectively. When I left home and got married, the first thing I bought was an automatic dishwasher, and the second was a clothes washer and dryer.

Bees and Bunnies

Gene raised bees. He would dress me up in his beekeepers suit and send me in to collect the honey. He made me feel it was an honor that he would allow me to collect his honey. Gene took care of the rabbits. I loved the baby bunnies and it seemed we were always having them. Holding a baby bunny is one of the softest warmest experiences of my young life. I didn't like it when they killed the rabbits and took their skins off. I knew we needed the meat to eat and the money we got when they sold the furs, but I will never forget the squeal of a rabbit being killed.

How traumatic for a young girl to see her warm fuzzy bunnies murdered and skinned. I cannot even imagine witnessing this as an adult. A child of the depression had to grow up in a hurry. Was brother Gene, pictured above with his mother Helen in 1930, really trying to honor his little sister by letting her collect the honey or just avoid getting stung himself?

Gene

My brother Gene was an important part of my life. He's six years older than me, and I always looked up to him. In my eyes he would do no wrong. He kept me in line with teasing and often tormenting me, but I didn't mind. He was several steps above me socially and there were some painful reminders of that at times. He had his own grandmother and aunts and uncles and we did not share the same father. He was a one and only in that family and they spoiled him terribly whenever he went to visit them. He had nice clothes, a fancy bike and always had money. He used to tease me a lot about the skirts Mother made for me from feed sacks. In those days the animal feed sacks were printed and colorful and after the chickens, rabbits, ducks and goats had finished the feed, mother would make me a new skirt.

Mom remained close to her brother Gene throughout her life. He is still going strong at the age of 81. Like mom he has alway loved adventure. He and my Aunt Cathy, pictured above in 1950, belonged to a snow skiing club long before skiing was popular. I remember visiting them at the ski lodge when I was a girl and being amazed that it took 20 minutes to lace up the boots and then snap onto long wooden skis before heading to the rope tow. They continue to travel all over the world as they have for most of their 50+ years together. My uncle Gene still skis and has even tried snowboarding in recent years. He also went bungee jumping in New Zealand a few years ago.

How humiliating for mom have to wear a feed sack to school. That must have really hurt her self-esteem. Imagine that today when teenage girls insist on designer labels.

What Did I Do to Deserve This?

What did I do to deserve this? I always thought I was a good listener. People have always wanted to share their loves and losses with me. I've heard many secrets and they were always safe with me. I've been more than willing to share my limited wisdom but always in words that would help. I love to encourage, to give hope, to empower. I guess I'm what you'd call a positive person. No Pollyanna here; I'm a realist. I see things for what they truly are but always find a ray of hope in any misfortune. Maybe it's my faith in God. I've been a born-again Christian since I was a youngster of 10 or 11. My whole life was centered around the church when I was a child. The church was only 3 doors away and there seemed to be always something going on there. I loved to sing. I was in the youth choir and it was great fun to visit other churches to sing for them. I was very fond of the pastor's spinster daughter and she treated me in a special way. She led the choirs, took me places and taught me to play the piano. I only had a few lessons. I don't think we could afford the lessons. We couldn't afford much in those days. My mother worked as a grocery checker and Daddy worked sometimes. But mostly Daddy drank a lot of wine and he was sick a lot. I remember him most sitting or lying on the couch. But he loved me a lot. I was his only child and he truly adored me. I always knew that Mother was too busy to love us much. She was a strong woman, capable of handling whatever came along, and a lot of difficult times came along in her life, but she survived each one even stronger yet.

Mom definitely was a good listener. She was the person that everyone came to with their problems. She was happy to listen and to give advice. She was wise beyond her years. Her life was never easy and she learned to take care of herself at an early age. She encouraged others not to wallow in their suffering, but to be strong and empowered. I'm sure she prayed many a prayer for those she counseled. Yes, she was a positive person. She was the one with cancer, yet she was the one who encouraged the rest of the family be positive and not defeated. Her faith was a private matter. She went to church occasionally, mostly just on Easter Sunday. She did encourage my brother and I to go to Sunday school though, and I remember helping the teacher teach a third grade class at our local neighborhood church, where my brother and I walked on Sunday mornings. Later when I was 15 I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior on Easter Sunday when 4 generations of us women attended Van Nuys Baptist Church. I too sang in the high school choir and visited churches all over California to sing. I joined a small Christian band and we sang on Sunday afternoons at convalescent homes in the San Fernando Valley.

The first photo above is mom's senior portrait taken in 1951. The next one is her and I when I was about 4 years old. The last photo was taken in 1980. I was 27. Next to me is my mom (Dolores Reina) who was 46, her mom (Helen Richardson) who was 72, and Helen's mom (Amanda Johnson) who was 100. Grandma Johnson lived to the ripe old age of 101, Grandma Helen lived to 89 and mom died too young at 58.

Cancer Diagnosis April 11, 1991

Thursday April 11, 1991

Today I learned that I have ovarian cancer. I thought the nausea for the past 10 days was the flu but then my belly began to fill with fluid. I had been having little sharp shooting pains occasionally for months above my belly button and the doctors had run all the tests looking for a gastro problem., We never suspected this. Oh, now and then there was a slight pain in my ovaries if I sat down hard.

When the doctor left, Frank and I held each other tight and we cried. Our retired life is just beginning. We have so many plans for the years ahead. What now?

I have agreed, eagerly, to be a part of a study to determine if results with Stage III ovarian cancer are better with surgery first or chemo first.

My mom and my stepdad Frank were supposed to come up to Northern California to visit me for my birthday 2 days earlier and I was so disappointed that she was not feeling well enough to make it, and even more devastated to find out that she had cancer. I felt so helpless being so far away and so very sad at the prospect of losing my mother. She was 56 when she was diagnosed with cancer, the same age I am today. My brother encouraged me to drive down to Southern California (Simi Valley) to visit her and see how well she was coping with her diagnosis. I did that and it helped. She was incredibly strong and determined. She told us right up front that with Stage III ovarian cancer, her chance of surviving for 5 years was only 15%, but she was determined to be in that 15%. I remembered that I had given my mom Gilda Radner's book a few years earlier about her battle with ovarian cancer, and how Gilda had fought the disease but eventually died. I felt somehow there was a connection.

Birth

September 18, 1934

Dear Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Ila and Uncle Lee,

This is my first picture. I am three months old! Everything is still very strange to me, but I am doing my best to keep my eyes wide open in order to see all that is going on around me. So sorry not to have made your acquaintance before, but Daddy and Mother have spoken of you often enough. So I guess you must be OK. Don't you think I am a rather husky girl the way I hold myself up? Especially for only 3 months? You must excuse this writing as Daddy is doing it for me, because so far the only thing I am able to hold in my hand is a rattle. By now I can laugh, which everyone seems to enjoy, but when I talk, nobody seems to understand, except maybe Daddy who calls me Snocky Poops. All the family seem to like me, and even my big brother Gene takes a great deal of interest in me. Mother devotes most of her time to me and I am always glad to see Daddy come home because we are then always very happy together. I have often heard Mother and Daddy say they would sure like to take me back to California, but Daddy says business is not so good so it may be some time before we see you.

Love to all, Dolores, brother, Mama and Dad

P.S. Dear Grandpa, Daddy told me about the remark you made about me being only a girl. I don't think he did so badly because I am what both Mother and Daddy had hoped for. If Daddy has better luck and the business improved, maybe someday I will have another baby brother.

This letter was written by my Grandpa Gerald "Bumpy" in 1934 to his family back in California to announce the birth of my mother Dolores Orcutt. She was born on May 26, 1934. I never knew Grandpa as he died of lung cancer before my first birthday in 1954. Both Grandpa and Grandma were alcoholics and Grandpa was a heavy smoker as well. Dolores' brother Gene was actually her half-brother from her mother's first marriage. There never was another baby brother.