I was going to go with the homes and moves narrative but realize that for many years almost all my photos were slides. They have not been scanned yet. Talking about old homes with no photos to bring them to life seems rather pointless so that will wait for awhile.
Instead I will jump into a favorite topic: all those non-coincidences and really astounding patterns that, at least in my life, have kept cropping up. Maybe everyone has them and just does not think anything of it? Maybe I am seeing things that are really not significant at all? ~ One Latina single shoulder shrug. Quien sabe!
When I met my future husband, who happened to live next door, shortly after his first wife had passed in a rather tragic chain of events, we very soon found how many people we knew in common or had at least a passing connection with. I admit that back in the 30s and 40s when we were growing up in Arizona it was a thinly populated new state but I lived and grew in the Verde Valley, almost exactly the geographic center of the state and very seldom went south of Phoenix while Jim grew up in Bisbee, short miles from the Mexican border and in the far southeastern corner of the state. and considered Tucson far north! His dad was in the mining industry, then part of the Phelps Dodge empire which also operated the Jerome and Clarkdale facilities but my family had almost nothing to do with that except for few neighbors so employed and the fact we rented a home from the company. Both the Waltons and the Morgans were avid outdoors folks but mostly in different parts of the state.
When I was hardly more than a toddler, Dad had an occasional visitor he had met through some contacts with the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, a young man named George Daniels. I had close to a crush on him for a bit! A few months later, he joined the Marines for the Korean War as did Jim Walton and they crossed paths being stationed at El Toro in California in the MPs. Later George was working in Yuma, back for the game folks and he and Jim were friends. A bit later, we got acquainted with a game ranger stationed in the Verde area named Don Smith. My mom and his wife Lucy were friends and Charlie, then about six, became friends with Grady Smith and they were in Cub Scouts together. Ten years later the Smith family was in Yuma and Grady was in a Scout troop Jim led as Scout Master; Malcolm Walton , just a year younger, knew Grady too. Jim and Don shot together and worked an occasional law enforcement issue since Jim was then on the Yuma PD.
Kind of bland stuff. eh?
So let me detour to a name. Among the mentors, very close male friends and partners/lovers in my life--of which there actually hasn't been an enormous number!!--five are named Jim! James McLarney was my high school English teacher in my Junior and Senior years and very much an influence in encouraging me to write. He also helped arrange things when I finally went off to college and we dated casually for a couple of years at that time. A funny aside, the other main English teacher at Mingus with whom I also worked on the annual and newspaper staffs and he and Mr. M kind of co-taught some, was Ernest Gabrielson. Turns out he and Jim Walton were also in the marines together and had been serious buddies at Bisbee High School where both graduated in 1948.
Moving on, in college I signed up for a course called Asian Studies in my last senior semester and did not get the section I had wanted but one that met earlier in the day. I went to the first class, mildly miffed. But the prof was James Revard, and I was quickly fascinated by this dynamic and charismatic man who became a mentor and adviser, a very close friend and almost a spirit guide in many ways. Our friendship did not end until his death to lung cancer in 1996.
Then in November 1970 after I graduated and started working, I moved from Sierra Vista to Bisbee, farther from Fort Huachuca but where the rents were much more economical. I found my next door neighbor was a policeman and met his daughter who introduced herself to my then roommate and me wearing her cat like a fur stole. In January '71 I was gone for two weeks to a class in San Francisco and when I was paying my rent upon my return the landlord said the lady next door had just passed away. I made polite comments but did not know who she was.
In May I began to get acquainted with the widower cop-next-door and we started keeping company. His name was James Walton and I acquired that name when we married in September, to the consternation of the more conservative folks in Bisbee, but he had two young kids and they needed a mom substitute. Ours was always a practical and friendship-based relationship although the love was there and strong enough to last for thirty two years.
Then in 2007 as I described in a recent post, I met yet another man named James. Jim Lee and I were never strangers from the first time we spoke on the phone to the first time we met face to face and on until after several years with no contact save a few calls and texts, we still share a surprisingly strong, lasting and intense bond. We were not destined to be a couple this time but are sure we have shard other lives and relationships
Finally in 2014 after I'd lived in Alamogordo for awhile, my brother's lady at the time engineered a meeting between me and a guy she had dated a time or two before she took up with Charlie. He was a big man, talkative and outgoing, blue-gray eyes and again, not a stranger although he often felt to me like a slightly blurred carbon copy of Jim Walton. Jim Smejkal and I continued to date casually for the next five plus years. We never quite became a couple due to a number of influences and intervening matters but I certainly count him a very close friend and someone I respect and hold in deep affection.
So five Jims.... There was a Charles and a Bobby who were also very important and a number of lesser memories and "boy friends" over the years but somehow five out of seven really significant men in my life seems beyond the purview of mere chance. Next time I will touch on some odd parallels and links of sorts among the seven.
Sorry, no pictures. I do not have one of each of them so will skip that for now.
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