Apparently some wet and colder weather had arrived since the prior week and in general things were not going too well. Such issues were more the rule than an exception. When you have less than optimum facilites and conditions in general it does not take much to put a monkey wrench in the machinery!
Sat Feb 6, 1965
I awoke stiff and sore, smelled the rain and groaned quietly. Splashed out to do the chores. Mom and I drove out. It was a mess. I walked uptown after drying off from the chores. Got a letter from Judy and a new one. Bought a few groceries and came home. Had lunch and did the noon chores, still in the rain. We concluded we needn’t buy hay ‘til Sunday, I spent the afternoon writing to Laura and Judy. Dad drove Charlie Mike and me out. It was one helluva mess out there. I have had enough rain to last me 100 years. It settled down for the night just as we finished feeding here. I played records all night while working on a mailer to send to Judy. It will be a passel of stuff. No use bathing tonight as I had planned. I’ll be filthy a little longer I guess. If it is still bad tomorrow I’ll sew. I hope we can get this article of mine done soon so I can send it off before the end of the month at least. Guess I’d better trot off. It is 10:30 and cold in this buggy jail. I really don’t feel like anything is real anymore. That’s the only way I keep from cracking up utterly. Dusty failed me again--no letter. I’ll mail Cim’s(Baird) letter on Monday. Dusty can’t do me this way and get by with it. He better have an awfully good excuse. I think he’s worried now. Well, ok. If that’s the way you want it I love you but you can’t walk out on me that way without my reacting .
There was no riding or leading this day; it seems to have rained almost all the time. Maybe it did let up some as I went up town and did what needed to be done and probably would not have walked and carried stuff home if it was too wet. I guess we thought we could manage on whatever hay we had since trying to go get any, bring it home and keep it dry enough not to mold or go bad would have been challenging.
I know I have mentioned Judy often enough. She'd been one of my early pen pals and so we'd been correspondng for some time now. She was a good artist and had worked with me on illustrations for my in-progress YA novel, Cindy and the Challenges. Now I was asking her to do some pen and ink work for the horse training article or articles I was working on and I was hopeful of getting it submitted to Western Horseman soon. I was still really very naive about publishing but had been seeing Dad send things off to magazines for years and getting almost as many acceptances and checks as rejections so I figured I could do it too! Not quite that easy, I found, but I did try. Laura was another pen pal, She got married and we quit writing before too much longer.
Playing records was a relief and an escape of sorts. Maybe music really does sooth the savage beast! Most of my records were music the whole family liked and enjoyed so that was seldom a bone of contention. I think Mom did realize how much her gift meant not just to me but to all of us. Good old trading stamps. For impoverished folks, it was a good way to get things you might not be able to simply afford. This was one of the most valued though, along with my little camera that I got for Christmas 1961.
I had come to rely so greatly on Dusty's letters and got too upset when they were late or slow. I knew he had trouble writing and suspected that the work situation was often really difficult with the bad weather that winter and spring, worse up in Flagstaff and both directions along the I-40/66 highway and the Santa Fe main transcontinental line. Mostly I was just blowing off steam with my complaints and forgivness came readily with each new missive. I still had my doubts at times, too, and despite evidence to the contrary, had trouble believing that he really did care for me and I was 'worthy' of that regard. The cowboy girl was very insecure and lacking in self esteem.
After a few weeks of relative calm, various problems seemed to have cropped up where the parents were arguing and fighting a lot and a good deal of that angst dribbled down on us kids. I wanted so very much just to pick up a few treasures and vamoose--anywhere but there. Yet I could not. I did not think I could support myself; I feared the animal swould suffer as well as probably my brothers; and I felt "responsible" for trying to hold things together that were continuously on the verge of unraveling,
Of course I did not take pictures of the mud and the mess, the animals wet and maybe cold, Charlie Mike and me in the old rubber boots and oil cloth raincoats--which of course leaked. And the struggle to get feed out to them all and hope they did not waste much since it was mostly dear in terms of costs. And any obvious waste was always said to be our fault for not doing a good job. No wonder gray, wet and chilly days still make me get depressed. So I am not sure what I can do to add some visual here. Well, a few of Judy's "Cindy" drawings --sorry they are mostly sideways. Not able to fix tight now.
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