Another day of this will drive us all insane. It
wasn’t as bad outside as yesterday but the scattered showers kept us from
getting outside and working. I kept busy on odds and ends and I did the usual
chores. Charlie Mike and I went up to the library. I got to watch “The
Rifleman. It was a good show tonight and reminded me just how much I’d like to
meet a man like Lucas McCain. I was just born seventy five years too late but
that can’t be helped I guess. Didn’t see Blondie today. He is a poor
substitute for the kind of man I want but you’ve got to have somebody. Adios,
Gaye
This was the spring when I was out of school. I came to hate days when the
weather was ugly and I could not get out and ride--that was a chance to be by
myself, maybe see someone "interesting" (as in male over 15 and under 75!) and avoid any lectures or boring long "talks" generally about what I
should and should not do and how to do it and all that. My dad was a master of overkill on this! Ugh!! The regular feeding
and stock care chores did have to be done every day and in cold, wet, muddy or windy times were not at all pleasant.
I was certainly suffering with my "addiction to romance" at this point and was
frustrated with having little to no social life or even much in the way of
substitutes. So I watched TV westerns, started writing to pen pals and read
lots of novels! Hobbies like sewing, drawing and writing my early efforts at
fiction and poetry helped fill the time. A prior essay on the 'addiction' is here: https://deirdre-fourds.blogspot.com/2019/01/memoir-monday-addicted-to-romance.html
Being a "cowboy girl" was fun in some ways but it was so far out of step with where the rest of
the world was going at this point. That made it easy to feel like a misfit, often
sorry for myself, and a bit mistreated by life in general. Of course that is a
typical teenage thing, but from about eighth grade on, I was just not anything
like my schoolmates and contemporaries and felt I had so little in common with them. Our family was basically poor and our lifestyle miles away from anything 'average' or typical. I often felt friendless, ignored or invisible, and believed for sure those in my age group were
mostly laughing at me.
In reality most were not, if they even thought of me at all,
but at that time I'd heard or overheard just enough snarky comments to make me somewhat standoffish. I was always very shy anyway and the situation exacerbated that. You have to be a friend to have one; I did have a few but with many
people I had no idea how to approach them or really why I might need or want to.
Because of that, any boyfriends were mostly a bit older and girlfriends younger. "Blondie" was another nickname for one of my crushes at the time.
Some pix from the era: First is me, probably fall 59 before I quit school. Next is me as the typical cowboy girl I was most of the time at home and when not in school. Three is the first batch of mules we got that were the ultimate cause of my quitting school. Fourth is Charlie Mike, then about nine, showing how gentle Beano was, one of the mules we acquired in the 59-60 period. Beano was sold to a trail riding lady in Louisiana and shipped there by rail!
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