Memoir Monday, Oct 17, 1964

So  much had happened in a mere week! The day before I had come down with the mumps! At the age of twenty one that was no light matter and probably added to  my later-discovered sterility issues. I remember I was one sick and miserable puppy for over a week. Childhood diseases should never happen to adults--the results are not good! (Damn my over-protected childhood.) I think Alex got them at school a bit before this and Charlie Mike had them several years earlier.

Oct 17, 1964, Sat

Boy, I am twenty shades if blue today. Ugh. This mumps bit is awful. Can’t eat worth a damn. I spent the day writing letters (ten pages to Baird and five to Norm). playing solitaire and feeling sorry for myself. The folks made a late and hasty trip to Prescott. Charlie Mike did all the home chores alone. I felt bad for him. I condensed sixteen pages of letter into four for Dusty. I’ll have Charlie Mike mail it on Monday probably. The only thing that tasted good to me all day was the special ice cream Mom brought me. It was delish. Gee, I’m a mess. Hope it does not last long! I’d just about die. Maybe my appetite will improve after I get well because I’ll have to fast ‘til then. I’m hungry now but I can’t eat. This is terrible really. I’m just so mad that I could flip.  I hoped and hoped that I would not get them but I think I knew I would all along. Heavens to Betsy. Well, I guess it’s the only way I can get a vacation so I may as well make the best of it.

To backtrack slightly, on the 13th, Dusty had come over to the house in the evening at my and Charlie Mike's invitation. This was not an event that ended well. I should have smelled a rat! (Naive innocent that I was still.) It was really out of character when Dad had said a few days before that Charlie Mike and I should "bring our friends home to meet the family." I'm not sure how it had come up but it seemed Dusty was to be one of them. Ha, this seeming jollity from a man who had become so reclusive we almost *never* had kids we knew come into the house and the one who had created a virtual fortress with the enmeshed family to where the whole world was basically barred from our place? Yeah, sure. 

Oh, the visit went well enough, talking about ranches and horses, hunting and such. I think Charlie Mike and I ate supper in the living room with our guest and gave him a piece of cake or pie. Mom gave me a small bawling out after he left, but the next day all hell broke loose. We were instructed to never go around the work train again and I was absolutely never to speak another word to that 'railroad man.' (Always said with a sneer, as if that employment was anathema to two whose father/father-in-law were both life-long railroad employees, and who had been raised and sent to college on those wages? Rankest hippocracy!! ) Needless to say, I was already well set in the practice of disregarding such orders and Charlie Mike was getting there. We would just be more sly, discrete and careful. I am not sure if Dusty realized at first how this had really not gone well. He was polite, neatly dressed and outwardly should have been quite acceptable.  I did not get to speak to him again the next two days. Then on Friday, the weather turned wet and we were not able to cross paths as usual--and by that evening I knew I was getting very sick. I was devastated!

Back in 1963, feeling totally disgusted about my lack of social life, I had put another letter in Ranch Romances magazine for pen pals. Norm and Baird were two that I had kept out of the replies I got. Norm lived in Idyllwild, CA and raised shetland ponies. Baird lived in Missouri and was semi-disabled with severe epilepsy but became a friend or almost uncle/elder brother and I grew fond of him, though it was no romance.  A few months later I ended both contacts  as I committed totally to Dusty but I was not there yet. 

The next week was dismal.  The disease has become very rare since then with vaccines but like many others, there is a resurgence due to the  anti-vax movement and arrivals of  people from other places where vaccines are rare or not available. BTW I had both sides effected at once. I have no personal photos of mumpsishness!(No selfies in those days!) So I found a couple of illustrations. My hair was lighter and face less round but the gals here (a before and after I think) are not too far from me at that point, glasses especially. The old rag around the face was a 20's-40's classic meme for mumps! There was a quarantine sign too but I think not by the 60s.

e.