Daughters of the Shadow Men

I am sure the horse was not real, but I was plenty nervous about joining my sister Linda in California after her nervous breakdown, during which I had earned not a little blame for how I stimulated her the wrong way and handled what happened. 

Linda appeared to be in her right mind when I got to California, but I had no way of knowing what her problems still were except through the letters we had been writing back and forth through my years in Phoenix. We had done a lot of arguing and even had some pretty good fights in those letters, but I can't quote them, since at some later point I was carrying so much baggage around in my many moves, I told the sisters we needed a good letter bonfire, and most of us burned them up.  That way we thought we were covering up the evidence of a lot of stupid and long winded fights nobody would have enjoyed reading. 

I was pretty wary moving to Burbank, knowing I would not have a lot of energy to fight and quarrel, while earning a living for my family.  I had frantically instructed Dean in Hawaii that he had better be prepared to pay every penny of his child support.  I had had to leave the financial protection of my parents, no small step, and our sons would be totally dependent on what he and I could provide. Since it was only $60 a month, he did comply even though I think at the time Elaine was sending him to college, and he was not even working.  She was a top money maker in her job as secretary to an architect.  

Linda was very helpful when it came to offering me a place to stay until I could rent an apartment, and baby sitting services when I got my old job back at Van de Camp's.  I hated to take a split shift, but morning shifts were not available, and I had discovered in Phoenix that an 8 hour waitress shift about killed me.  I needed the break in between to relax.  Van de Camp's was too far away to return home and do much of anything so I just had to stay there. 

Tano, Linda's small son, had developed very bad asthma problems.  He would start wheezing as soon as he got a cold.  He was undergoing tests to see if shots would help him.  Sam's older brother was a bad asthmatic and so was Margie, our sister, so Tano seemed to have inherited a big tendency. Linda was taking acting lessons at the time as she still had acting aspirations, but she had decided to stay home with Tano, because Sam, her husband, was a good provider.  I thought that was a wise decision.  Once when they had come to Phoenix, and Tano played with a neighbor's cat, he had been diagnosed with pneumonia before he left, and scared us all badly.  He appeared to be highly allergic to cats, like his Aunt Margie. 

I found an apartment in a complex with a pool that was just a little bit more money, so I decided to rent it because I thought the boys would have a lot of fun swimming, come summer.  Raymond was already showing signs of being a talented gymnast just as Linda had done as a child. He was always trying to walk on his hands as he had seen her do numerous times.  She could still walk up and down a flight of stairs on hers.  Raymond was not satisfied until he could walk on his clear out to the street and back. With his somesaulting frenzy he was bound to be a natural in the pool.  I never had to worry about him drowning. 

We only lived a few blocks from Linda's and the boys could easily walk back and forth to her house, if necessary. With Blackie along to protect them, I had no fears.  Blackie got so he loved Linda as much as he did me, and would go into a barking frenzy whenever she showed up. Linda always had a beloved dog which Tano seemed to adjust to.  It was just cats he could not seemed to tolerate. The tests showed he was allergic to about everything. He had a cough all during childhood that signaled a chronic  respiratory problem.    

Gary and Raymond started having so much fun in the pool the minute it got the least bit warm, and then I met Gene, too. It looked like California was not going to be too bad.  Dean had even insisted that the boys fly to Hawaii for spring break, I think it was, but that visit proved to be very very scarey. 

Raymond got off the plane after close to two weeks in Hawaii with huge dark circles under his eyes. I could not find out from anybody what happened to him over there.  I just could not even imagine what transpired.  He looked as though he had almost died.  He could not say what happened.  Gary said his step mother Elaine made him nervous about how he ate.  I had to make up my mind never to let him go stay to his dad's long again.  Maybe a weekend at the most. What might have happened is still a mystery to me because I have never seen a child before or since undergo such a change in such a short time.  He was subdued when he got home, but the black circles disappeared in a  couple of months. Thank God.

I had to face that Raymond was a delicate sensitive child despite his rather startling physical abilities.  He would always do better in gymnastics than in sports that required a great deal of running stamina.  He would scare us more than once with some alarming physical symptom when he was growing older and trying different stuff.       

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