Monday Memoir, Feb 28, 1961

 Still stuck in high school. This was not really a fun year. Oh well. 

Feb 28, 1961

Today was a pretty day but for some reason a rather trying day for me. School wasn’t bad. My classes passed quickly and I spent most of my spare time with Maureen. That Donna Osborne makes me so damn mad. One of these days I’ll knock her teeth down her throat! That damn cat.  I didn’t get any letters today. As usual I rode Tina out to the pasture. Everything was okay. While I was coming home I saw a car wreck. It was awful. These Mexicans didn’t make the curve above the lake. The Walkers got there first, so after I saw there was nothing I could do, I went home. It was awful and it made me sick. So sick I did not enjoy my spaghetti dinner much. I did my chem. problems. Probably did a poor job, too. I was so tired. I don’t feel good. I’ve got to go to bed. I’ve stayed up too late already. Today just wasn’t a good day. See, I can’t even write straight. I’m scared, I guess. Bye, Gaye

At this point I had just begun to become friends with Maureen Jewell who was new to the school that semester. She was into cowboys and horses too and we hit it off and became close friends for quite awhile.  Sadly I lost track of her in the late 60s and have never found her again--maybe on FB but a message got no response. 

I am not sure how I got crosswise with Donna Osborne but she was (I thought) riding my ass with no reason in PE and I was about ready to do a mule treatment on her. Get the 2x4 before talking nice. I finally got to where I would just laugh at her snark as if it were hilarious and that kind of spoiled the fun, I guess. No fights ever took place. I really did not believe in fighting. Bashing a mouthy,crude guy over the head with my biggest book does not count!

I dimly recall that wreck I saw and it was pretty ugly if memory serves. I'm not sure if  anyone was killed or not but it was bad. Perhaps a bit gory so that red spaghetti sauce did not look appetizing. That gravel road around the lake had some tight curves and the loose gravel could be very tricky. If you started to lose control, that's all she wrote--you were going to flip or roll. Later I drove that road fairly often but kept my speed down and never had any problems. 

My dear Tina was now five years old and well fixed in  her place as my favorite. There were few things she would not do and do well and I had long outgrown being a little intimidated because she was very energetic and also pretty tall. 

Just another ordinary day in the life of the cowboy girl/high school junior who often felt she existed in two separate worlds. Was it a privilege or a curse? I often wondered; maybe a weird combination of both.There is still a lot of both aspects in me today and especially in my writing. I did grow up in "interesting" circumstances and maybe that prepared me for the very complicated world we live in today.

A few photos. Maureen a year later, May 1962. The only photo I have of her. Then Tina, probably a year or two later but out at the pasture corrals where I had ridden her this day. Finally a panorama paste-up from three snapshots of Peck's Lake and the road around it. Where the accident happened would be far in the background .