As I go through this book copying chapters here, I find instances that I want to change, which is invariably what happens when you go over a book. I'm curious if some authors are happy with their completed project or if they finally say just print the darn thing.
48
June
"To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight." –ee cummings.
Two years ago, my eldest daughter filmed our ninety-six-year-old friend June.
My daughter's primary interest was what she ate. She wanted to know how people fared before they had all the processed foods we have today.
However, we found June's attitude far more fascinating.
June grew up in Chicago, which was not a good place to be during the Great Depression. Her biological mother died before June could remember her, and her stepmother died slightly later.
According to June, her father was a traveling salesman and a con man. Her father often couldn't pay the rent, and she frequently came home from school to find their belongings on the sidewalk. They would then move to a new place, and June would move to a new school. That amounted to 13 schools by the time she was in the 8th grade.
After the death of June's two mothers, her father couldn't or wouldn't cope with June and her two brothers.
June said she was always hungry and stole food, mainly fruits and vegetables, displayed outside the store. She would choose a store on a corner where she could run down a side street. She was the fastest runner on the block and thus elected to steal while the other kids waited a distance away, where she would share her bounty.
After her father left, she lived with various family members and eventually ended up in a girls' school. June had gone before a judge and asked, "Your honor, do I have a choice about where I live?"
"You most certainly
do," he answered, and thus she chose the Girl's school. Her guardian aunt keep trying to save her soul, which clashed with her grandmother's teaching on metaphysics.
She said the food was basic but good at the school, mainly fruits and vegetables, as meat was expensive. Breakfast was oatmeal or porridge. One egg on Sundays was a treat.
Her aunt, still her legal guardian, wouldn't let her join the military when she was fresh out of high school, so she got a crummy job (her words) until she was twenty-one and then joined the Army WACS.
While in the military and egged on by her roommates, June stole a pie from the kitchen but didn't run fast enough and was caught. Her sergeant placed her on potato peeling duty, where June commented that that was the worst job. "Oh, no, it isn't," said her sergeant, moving her to garbage duty. The stench was so putrid that June began throwing up and couldn't stop. Thus, she ended up in the infirmary.
She realized that leaving school was a mistake because she wanted to attend the University. When she was discharged from the WACs, the GI Bill was available, so she took a test and qualified for college admission. While in the military, she met her husband, and after she left the WACS, both became students.
He was a pilot and a vegetarian, so they continued a no-meat diet, for they liked it, and meat was too expensive for two struggling students. When they became more prosperous, they tried a steak but didn't like it. However, when June became anemic, the doctor told her to eat liver, as raw as she could stand."
June was an artist. Her husband ("He was beautiful," she said) was a military pilot and the love of her life. "Your job isn't to clean house," he told her. "It's to paint."
And then came the fateful day when two uniformed officers came to the door. June ran, knowing what their presence meant. The officers chased her to tell her that her husband had been killed in a plane crash. His buddy pilot in another plane flying beside him saw him slumped over, so he must have either lost consciousness or died before the crash.
Howie's death sent June into a depression, and she drank heavily for a time. She considered herself an alcoholic, and she stopped drinking alcohol for about 20 years. In her later life, a doctor told her that a little red wine in the evenings would be suitable for her, and she drank it with no repercussions. She found she could take it or leave it.
A military doctor told her she was diabetic. She said, "No, I'm not," but for the next 50 years, she monitored her food, checked her blood sugar level, was healthy, and never took medication.
June grew up a Christian Scientist who did not believe in illness. Once, she had the mumps and didn't know it until someone told her. Still, she carried on as though having the mumps was nothing.
I know she had many love affairs over the years but never re-married. One relationship that meant a great deal to her was a platonic relationship with an elderly gentleman who wanted her as his driver. They traveled extensively, and she had the opportunity to see the world. Once, this little old gentleman who dressed impeccably, was an engraver, and June told me she never knew precisely where his money came from, told one of June's unsuitable suitors she couldn't get rid of that he would have him killed, and he knew the person to do it. The man left the city, and she never heard from him again.
June moved from Florida to Oregon with her boxer dog. When he wouldn't walk across the road at a Motel because it was too hot, she told the owner they had to stay until the temperature dropped.
June traveled to a ranch with me one day, where I wanted to see a particular horse. I didn't want the horse, but they had a little Pomeranian dog for sale. June debated about buying it, for she thought she was a big dog person. But decided to take the dog.
She named the dog Lucky Lady
Lilly, which sounds like a dance hall girl, and that fit June fine. The two remained buddies for the rest of Lilly's life. June had
hoped they would go together, and once June told me she never thought she would
live so long. June knew Verner Erhart, the founder of EST, and Dan Blakenship who spend 50 years searching for the treasure of Oak Island.
I told her she lived so long because she appreciated life. She loved people, and people loved her.
Although June had said she would not go into an "Old folk's home," her niece convinced her, and she entered a luxurious complex where she fell in love with a widower. They had one glorious year together until one morning, the attendants found him dead. He had declared that they were getting hitched at the beginning of the new year.
"I would have loved to be Christian's wife," June said.
I'm telling you this because while June had a challenging life, for the thirty-some years I knew her, she was the most positive person I have known. Besides, some people's lives deserve to be told—like Bill's, who you will meet in the next chapter.
One of June's paintings:
I believe Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece who has known Donald Trump her entire life when she says that he has always been a bully, and that if elected President he will seek revenge on the people who have opposed him.
That is not Presidential material.
I have said many times that I don’t care if you like Kamala Harris or not, but I still believe in democracy, and want to preserve it. We have a country built on checks and balances to ensure that one aspect of the government does not overpower the others. Really folks do you want to give the President absolute power?
That’s absurd. That is a dictatorship.
Trump wants absolute power. Harris does not.
Where's the choice?
Really?
We're been off-kilter, angry, polarized, fearful, raciest, and anti-women long enough, and I believe it was largely stirred up by Trump.
Time to have some joy in our lives.
From Michael Moore posted in Substack:
"Which is why maybe at this point in my rant I just need to say out loud that which is being said to me in private by people I respect — and not just in whispers, but in excited tones of exuberance: That a new era is being born, one where Caucasian is just one of the options but no longer the bossy pants of the world. Where it’s OK if you’re missing the lower right quadrant of the second X chromosome thus making it a “y” which means you’re never going to have your own Fallopian tubes so just deal with it and keep your hands off the gender who has them. Simple.
"An aggregate of top polls as of today shows that Harris will defeat Trump in the Electoral College count by 270 to 268.
But I think we need more. We need to ensure Harris wins by a landslide.
