Father dead, mother dead, I felt like
an orphan. Earlene, my older sister, was
still alive. Her four children, who
lived in New Jersey, were never close to me.
Despite the periodic family visits that I made while they still lived at
home, the geographic distance was too great a barrier. I sent each of them birthday cards every year
when they were growing up, but rarely received one. The two girls never visited by themselves,
and none of their families ever ventured to Missouri after they were married. The two boys each visited once when I lived at
the lake, and Jon, the oldest, spent one Thanksgiving with Diane and me.
Jon visited us at the lake during the time
we were shopping for waverunners. He
took one out for a spin and disappeared from view heading towards a big
cove. Diane and I waited and waited for
his return, and finally asked the sales person to send someone to find
him. Upon Jon’s sheepish return, we
learned he had managed to throw himself off the machine and turn it upside down. What a maneuver he must have been trying! He could be a show-off.
Craig, his younger brother, visited
later. My friend, also named Craig,
borrowed a fast and sexy cigarette boat to take us for a ride around the
lake. On the way back, we stopped by the
“Party Cove,” a place Diane and I had heard stories about. It lived up to its reputation! People tied their boats together, walking
from one to another, visiting each other, drinking, smoking and snorting who
knows what, while listening to loud music.
From the topless women and eager men, we could only guess about the
transactions going on for flesh and drugs.
We didn’t stay long, although nephew Craig was fascinated.
Picture of me sitting on the boat in
front of my house.
The best thing in my life was Diane. She loved me even better than my mother or
anyone else ever had, unconditionally. I
never worried about her being unfaithful.
She was a constant support through this feeling like an “orphan” period. It sometimes embarrassed me how much she
would praise me when we ate dinner in the company of one of the scientists I
consulted with, telling them how smart and capable I was.
During the summer of 1998, I started work
on settling my mother’s estate. I made a
record of the original cost or basis for her investments to provide the tax
accountant who would complete the estate tax returns. As was the case for my father, the taxes were
quite hefty. To have a record of their
new basis for my sister and myself, I downloaded and stored the value of her investments
on the day of her death. The faster I
could complete these tasks, the sooner the accountant could finish his work, the
estate taxes could be paid, and I could distribute my mother’s holdings to my
sister and myself. Being the detail
person I am, I had to correct some of the accountant’s paperwork a couple of
times before it was submitted.
I traded my minivan for a Toyota Avalon,
and in August Diane and I drove it to Denver, CO to visit our friends Karen and
Joe. I teased Joe by saying he had a
Ph.D. in cricketology. I had heard his
wife describe helping him capture his subjects, crickets, in places where most
people would not want to go. I had also
seen his collection of old oscilloscopes. Both Joe and I had advanced degrees and were
interested in science, while Karen and Diane had both been Executive Directors
with Planned Parenthood. They took us to
visit Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre, and then we had dinner at a nearby
restaurant, The Fort, where Karen Cody Carlson told us about her ancestor, "Buffalo
Bill" Cody. They also took us to
the Denver Botanical Gardens. The
vegetation at this garden was so different from that in St. Louis, let alone
Miami. After all, Denver is called the ‘mile-high’
city, so the plantings can tolerate the more arid, high-desert climate.
Leaving Denver, we spent the next night in
a hotel room in a Central City casino.
We decided to never do that again, since we had to walk through a smoke-filled
room of one-arm bandits to get to the only restaurant. The next day, we enjoyed the drive north
through the mountains before having lunch in Ft. Collins. We then headed home, detouring by Castle Rock
in Kansas along the way. It had served
as a landmark for early settlers traveling west across the continent.
Pictures of Red Rocks Park and Castle Rock
In November 1998, Diane and I flew to
Jamaica to board the Premier Cruises’ ship, the SS Ocean Breeze, for Olivia’s Panama
Canal Cruise. We did not like our first
port of call, Cartagena, Colombia. On
the shore excursion there, we visited the 17th century San Pedro
Claver church in the heart of the Old City.
We were told about the Pope’s visit in 1985 and the bones of Saint
Claver which were on view. While we were
being told this history, our Olivia tour group sat on old wooden pews. Suddenly there was a large crack! Not wanting to think it was the glass
covering the case of bones, we saw a couple of large-bodied lesbians sheepishly
moving away from their sagging pew. We
contained our laughter.
As well as bones, the city also had too
many guns. Our shore excursion bus
stopped in downtown Cartagena for yet another shopping expedition. Most Olivia women love to shop, but not Diane
and I, so we remained on the bus. Looking
outside the window with horror, we saw one of the well-armed policemen hand a
gun to one of many pre-teen age school boys admiring them. Fearful of the gun going off and a bullet
hitting us, we ducked down on the other side of the bus. Fortunately, there were no gunshots, and we
couldn’t wait to get back to the safety of the cruise ship.
Bones of Saint Peter Claver
The ship next dropped anchor at the
San Blas Islands, where canoes of Indians approached our ship. The oldest woman in each canoe was obviously
the leader, motioning for coins to be thrown at their boats. We were on a high deck and didn’t even try. I did go on a tour in Costa Rica, but the
visit to Cartagena had scared Diane so much that she didn’t want to leave the
ship. After a van ride to a forested
area, I boarded a small, open sky lift type bench that held two people on each
side including the guide. We traveled through
the forest vegetation looking for butterflies.
I was very impressed by the knowledge of the young guide who could name
all the flora and fauna. Costa Rica was educating
its young people in the skills necessary for an eco-tourism economy.
Diane was busy, busy, busy, when we transited
the Panama Canal, taking pictures on the way to and from the lake in the middle
between the Caribbean and Pacific oceans.
Thanksgiving Day, the ship was anchored in the lake while we took a
tender to a small island with a nice beach.
It was a fun day of playing beach volleyball, dancing to music, and eating
barbeque. I developed a taste for the lemon
rum they were serving. Back on the ship,
the Thanksgiving dinner paled in comparison.
Returning home after the cruise, I was
busy catching up with old and new customers.
With Diane’s help, I had so much more time to focus on my work, and I
really enjoyed doing it. Excluding the
individuals with whom I worked in Columbia and St. Louis, I rarely ever met my
clients in person. It surprised me how well
I could get to know someone on the telephone.
Federal Express service at the lake had improved greatly for receiving
and sending documents. I now only needed
to visit St. Louis every other week. I
was really glad that I had started my own business, happier than I had ever
been working for someone else. However,
sometimes I struggled with the feeling of responsibility for supporting another
person.
Sue, the friend I met at Searle/Pharmacia,
moved with her partner Carmen to San Diego to work for a pharmaceutical
company, Agouron. She asked me to visit
there and meet with some of her department heads to discuss how I could help
them. As when I first started with the
Monsanto Human Health Division, I began preparing to teach statistics classes
using examples from my consulting with them.
This new contract meant occasional travel to San Diego, but I could also
see my nephew Jon who was living there.
As pleased as I was about being my own
boss, Diane and I were coming to the conclusion that we would be happier living
in Columbia. The political atmosphere at
the lake was very conservative. I
remembered the time I went to the polling place and heard others in line loudly
saying, with a wink and a nod: “You’re going to vote ‘right,’ aren’t you?” We felt like we had not appreciated the
opportunities available in Columbia as much as we should have when we
previously lived there. It truly is the
liberal oasis in the state of Missouri. Diane
and I finally made the decision to move back to Columbia.
Since I had gone through the process of
having one house built, I really didn’t want to go through it again. Hoping to find a house we would be happy
with, we contacted Carol Denninghoff with House of Brokers who had been Diane’s
real estate agent when she sold her house.
We made a date to go to Columbia.
The first residence Carol showed us was huge, on a big lot, and I
thought both the house and the grounds would require a lot of maintenance. It was not what I was after. The next houses she showed us were very nice,
but Diane shot them down one-by-one.
“Cheap material, poorly arranged kitchen, too many stairs” she would
say. I don’t think it was deliberate on
Diane’s part, but it wore me down. I
could tell that she was just not going to be easy to satisfy. I finally turned to Carol and said “OK, let’s
look at some lots.”
First, Carol showed us lots in
suburban neighborhoods that were being developed by individual builders. Then she showed us a cul-de-sac street, Holly
Hills Court, that was being developed by some of the same individuals who
planned and implemented The Village of Cherry Hill in Columbia. Most of the Holly Hills lots had already been
purchased. However, there were two
adjacent lots that were still for sale, and I thought they might work if
combined. They were on a ridge
overlooking Hinkson Creek with native trees on the back side. There was no room for a backyard, but we were
never going to have a dog anyway. The
side of one of the lots sloped into what looked like a drainage area. We met with the developers and found that one
of them, Don Ginsburg, was building the house next door on the side with the
slope. He asked if I would agree to
split off twenty feet of the lot next to his house so he would have more room
for his circle driveway. After I agreed,
we were able to negotiate the price, and I signed the contract on July 15,
1999.
Our plans for returning to Columbia
were taking shape. The next item on the
agenda was finding and hiring an architect.
We talked with Carol, Don, and our bank and came up with three names to
investigate. We requested references
from each of them as well as in-person interviews. We liked the firm of Pon Chinn and Associates. Pon told us the story of how he emigrated on
a boat to the United States, posing as the son of his uncle and going to work
in his uncle’s Chinese restaurant in North Platte, Nebraska. His architecture degree was from the
University of Nebraska. His daughter
Kimi’s architectural degree was from Kansas State University where I earned
both graduate degrees.
Choosing our architect was a big decision
that would require a comfortable partnership between us, Pon and Kimi. We invited them and their significant others
to join us at the lake house for a meal.
We all got along remarkably well, and they could see how we liked open
spaces and exposure to our surroundings.
Based on the experience related to us by one of his references, we made
sure the contract not only gave an hourly rate, but also an upper limit on the
total amount we could be charged. Then I
signed it.
Our lots were situated on the curve at the
end of the cul-de-sac. We requested two
sketches, one from Pon and one from Kimi, that showed how they pictured the
house on the lots. Her drawing looked
like a usual boxy house, whereas Pon’s showed the house having three
sections. A middle with two wings angled
on either side following the curve of the lots.
The house fitting the land appealed to us, so his drawing won.
We prepared a document describing our requirements
for the house. I was very conscious of how
my mother had to suddenly leave her home because of the steps and narrow
doorways. I had been developing
peripheral neuropathy in my feet and lower legs like Almeda had. We wanted our house to be handicapped accessible
with no steps required for entry from the street or garage and none inside the main
level. Stairs from the main living level
would lead down to the walk-out basement where the furnaces and hot water
heater were installed, but we did not plan on finishing the basement and
spending time there.
On the side of the house with the slope,
the architect planned a retaining wall with fill behind that would support a
driveway leading to a large garage with extra room for storage of business
records. Diane requested that a short
wall be built along the back and side edges of the driveway that she could fill
with dirt for a garden. She wanted easy access
to fresh herbs and flowers. The wing on
that side of the house would include the utility room, kitchen, pantry, powder
room for guests and Diane’s office. We
thought of her office, with the adjoining full bathroom, as a room that could later
be easily converted to a caregiver’s room when we needed one.
My office would be in the other wing with a
guest and a master bedroom. We requested
that our master bathroom have private vanities and toilets for each of us, a
roll-in shower, and bathtub. At the
lake, I had found having Diane’s office near mine was often distracting, as she
tended to loudly exclaim her frustration whenever she encountered a
problem. She would still be able to pick
up her phone and call me if she needed to, and I would have more privacy to
focus on work.
We used the same process to choose a general
contractor, interviewing several and checking references before deciding. These were the steps Gwen and I had neglected
when building the lake house. After
touring some of the homes they had built, we decided to hire Reinhardt
Construction, then owned by Jerry Reinhardt.
Much of their business was commercial, so their forms for pouring the
foundation were taller than usual which translated to higher ceilings. We also liked the fact that his company’s
carpenters were experienced union members.
While the house was being built, a trailer containing the blueprints,
specifications and an office for the foreman would be located on the property. He would approve and supervise everyone who
worked on the house, whether an employee or subcontractor.
Once the Columbia house decisions were
made, I focused more on the important elections that would take place in 2000. I had been following politics more and more
and supporting Emily’s List for many years.
Emily stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast (it makes the dough rise),
and it supports national and state pro-choice Democratic women. I also
contributed to the League of Conservation Voters to support environmentally
conscious candidates, the Victory Fund to support gay candidates, NARAL (National
Abortion Rights Action League), and several PACs, such as the one by People for
the American Way.
The year 1999 was coming to an
end. In December we made a quick trip to
New Jersey for the wedding of cousin Peter’s son, Gary to Rosa. We were entertained by the performance of the
best men singing along to Y.M.C.A. By
the end of the year, we had approved the blueprints and were making our final
plans for an Olivia land trip to New Zealand and Australia.
Earlier in the year, Anita, the woman who
had been Diane’s administrative assistant at Planned Parenthood, said that she
might be able to help us on our visit to New Zealand as her husband, Russell
Houston, had met people who lived there.
Russell was an NRA member and helped with the Bianchi Cup tournament
held in Columbia, MO each May. It is a
major pistol tournament attracting shooters from around the world with large
purses for the winners. Anita and
Russell often entertained the foreign visitors, and one of them was Harry
Hoover from New Zealand. The Houston’s
brought Harry to meet us at the lake. We
were very taken by this Kiwi, a nickname for New Zealanders. We exchanged email addresses and he extended
an invitation for us to stay at his home.
We left for New Zealand in February
2000 to spend time there on our own before joining the Olivia pre-trip. Harry volunteered to pick us up at the
Auckland airport, and we assumed he lived in a suburb. Much to our surprise, he kept driving for
over an hour. It was almost 70 miles south
of the airport to Hamilton. After we met
Harry’s wife, we realized we were staying with Harry and Hillary Hoover from
Hamilton. How’s that for
alliteration?
We learned a lot while staying with this
couple. Hillary was a midwife, so she kept
quite irregular hours. Harry kept a goat
in his yard so he wouldn’t have to mow.
Buried beneath the grass was a repurposed milk tank from a dairy. Harry used it to hold the rainwater he
collected from the roof run-off, and it provided the water for use in the house.
He was environmentally savvy.
We stayed with the Hoover’s a couple
of nights to get over our jet lag and learn more about New Zealand. They fixed us dinner, including the Pavlova
dessert named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. It was a meringue-based dessert with a crisp
crust but soft and light on the inside.
They served it with fresh strawberries and even more heavy cream than the
recipe specified.
Cholesterol levels must be very high in New
Zealand, as they consume a lot of butter and cream. The country is a major exporter of dairy products
to countries such as China, Australia, the US, Japan and Malaysia. I ate their wonderfully tasty ice cream every
day I was in New Zealand. Their
strawberries were small, not the hybrids we get that are bred for transporting over
days and many miles before we get them.
A couple of interesting things we
didn’t expect happened when they took us to the Hamilton Gardens. First, we encountered a mosaic of Marilyn Monroe, and second, when we ordered
an iced tea, we were told they only served hot tea. It’s the British connection. When we ate at a local restaurant, we learned
that when scallops are served in New Zealand, they have something attached to
them that we never see in this country.
To make sure their restaurants don’t substitute pieces of stingrays
which are plentiful in the area, the scallops are required to be served with
the flesh of the hinge still on them. It
is quite edible.
The mosaic of Marilyn Monroe in the
garden
From Hamilton, Diane and I rode a
public bus four hours further south to Napier, which is on the coast. We rode through plantations of redwood trees
which could be raised for lumber because of New Zealand’s climate. We were visiting Napier for two reasons. First, we wanted to see the architecture used
to rebuild the city after it was destroyed in the 1931 earthquake. During this
time of the great depression, Napier could afford to hire top architects to design
the city in the Art Deco style which Diane and I love. Second, the area is known to have excellent weather
for growing fruit, with lots of orchards and vineyards. A van picked us up at our motel for a tour of
the local wineries where we tasted the famous white wines of New Zealand.
Example of art deco
building in Napier
Then we boarded another public bus to
go north and stay a couple of nights near the Bay of Islands. After the bus left Auckland, it actually made
a stop so the passengers could see a giant kauri tree. It was illegal to chop down a kauri tree, but
we purchased a bowl made from the wood of a fallen tree. It broke our hearts that it didn’t make it
through customs in Los Angeles. Wonder
if someone with sticky fingers also liked it?
Giant Kauri tree
We joined other passengers on a van tour to
the northernmost tip of New Zealand where the Tasman Sea collided with the
Pacific Ocean in a spectacular swirl of currents. On our way back, our van of tourists from
England, Europe, and the U.S. stopped at a Māori
church. After learning about the church,
the passengers on our van were asked to choose and sing a song. The one everyone knew was “You Are My
Sunshine” written in 1941 and popular during WWII.
You
are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are gray
You'll never know, dear
How much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away
Diane and I returned to Auckland for a
night on our own before the official start of the Olivia trip. We sat on a restaurant’s outdoor porch
overlooking the bay. We watched as the
sailboats that were there for the America’s Cup loaded up with as much New
Zealand wine as they could carry. For
dinner, we had a glass of Villa Maria white wine with the local John Dory fish.
Joining the Olivia pre-trip, we toured
Auckland and then left to take a ride in the boats through the Waitomo Glowworm
Caves. The night spent in Rotorua was
smelly because of the sulfur emanating from the geysers and bubbling mud pools.
That evening, Māori dancers put on a
show, the males performing the Haka dance, showing us how ferocious they were
by sticking out their tongues and bulging their eyes.
Glow worm caves
Haka dance
Next, we flew to Christchurch on the South
Island and toured Hagley Park and the Botanic Gardens. On the way to Queenstown, our bus stopped at
a sheep farm for a hearty lunch. At our
destination, we rode across the lake on a steam powered boat to visit yet another
sheep farm. This time the farmer gave us
a demonstration of how his dogs were trained to herd sheep and how the sheep
are sheared.
On our way to a boat ride in Milford Sound,
we toured a hydroelectric generating station deep inside a mountain, and
learned that it is a major source of power for New Zealand. On these long bus rides, we were entertained
by tapes playing The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,
a 1994 Australian road comedy film that served as the basis for the subsequent
musical. The plot follows two drag
queens and a transgender woman as they journey across the Australian Outback
from Sydney to Alice Springs in a tour bus that they have named "Priscilla."
The next day our group flew to Melbourne to
join the larger Olivia land trip in Australia.
Diane and I were sad to be leaving New Zealand and its feeling of being
two decades behind the hustle and bustle of the rest of the modern world. We would hear no more singing by Connie
Francis, the American singer popular in the 1960s.
Our first night in Melbourne, the second
largest city in Australia, we were welcomed by a gathering of local lesbians. It is on the southeast coast, and where we received
our first introduction to Australian wildlife, including sloths, koalas,
kangaroos, and wallabies. Now enjoying
the Australian varietals, Diane and I joined a luncheon tour to a winery in the
Blue Mountains.
Picture of sloth, koala, kangaroos, and wallabies
In Sydney, Diane and I visited the famous
opera house and spent an evening listening to a musical review of compositions
by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. After
the show was over, we went out front to catch a taxi, and there were none. A bus pulled up and we asked the driver “Are
you going anywhere near our hotel?” He
asked “What hotel?” We admitted, “We
don’t know, but it is near a big Coke sign.”
He then said “I know exactly where you need to go. Get on and I’ll take you there.” Lucky for us the Coca-Cola Billboard in Kings
Cross, Sydney is an iconic landmark and the largest
billboard in the Southern Hemisphere.
Our hotel was right there, and we never again left a foreign hotel
without a card having its name, address, and phone number.
We made the five-hour flight to Cairns,
pronounced Cans, famous for being the largest city near the Great Barrier Reef.
The reef turned out to be the least interesting part of our visit. For viewing the reef, a boat took us out to
some floating docks with clear glass on the bottom and swimming areas that were
surrounded by nets to keep out the stinging jellyfish. Diane and I didn’t have our snorkel masks
with the prescription lenses so we couldn’t see much. One morning we visited the nearby rainforest,
strolling along an elevated walkway among the trees, signs warned us to keep
our hands to ourselves, as snakes and spiders in the Southern Hemisphere are
more dangerous and poisonous than the ones up North. OK! We
were happy to comply.
That afternoon, we signed up for fishing in the nearby Barron-river
estuary. It is a mixture of fresh water
from the river and salt water from the Pacific Ocean. There were only five of us on a small boat:
our guide, Diane and I, and two tour guides, one from Olivia and one a local
Aussie lesbian hired for the trip. When
she talked with the local fishing guide, the accent was so strong that we
couldn’t understand most of their conversation.
It was a fun afternoon. Diane even caught a stingray, but it
suctioned itself so tightly to the bottom that even our guide couldn’t bring it
up. After catching what looked like one
of our lake catfish, we learned that, like much else in Australia, you better
think twice about handling it. Our guide
started clipping off its whiskers, and we asked why. He said that one day he was out fishing by
himself, a whisker punctured his hand, and it swelled up so large and fast that
he could barely make it back to shore. Unlike
in the U.S., the whiskers of Australian catfish are very poisonous.
We agreed with our Olivia guides that we
should take our catch to the hotel restaurant, ask that it be prepared and served
to us for dinner. However, when Diane
and I went to dinner, we were told that our friends had been called away. An Olivia group on an afternoon walk in the
rainforest had not returned on schedule.
The story we heard was that a guest turned her
ankle, it was getting dark, the guides got lost, and finally rescuers were
called in to bring the group out, some by helicopter. All the Olivia staff were needed to look
after the women in that group. Olivia is
amazing, though. By the next day, they
had T-shirts made up saying “I survived the walk in the rainforest!” and gave
them to all the women on that walk.
Instead of complaining about what happened, they were wearing their new
T-shirts with pride.
Before we left Cairnes, Diane and I visited
the Aboriginal Art Gallery. The walls of
the gift shop were filled with interesting aboriginal paintings, and we knew there
were large walls to accommodate artwork in our new Columbia house. How might we decide on a painting? Each of us had the agreed upon task of making
a ranked order listing of our favorite paintings. When we got back together and compared our lists,
the same painting was among the top three on both of them. It was entitled “Carpet Snake” by Aboriginal
artist Sheila Brim, and while incorporating the myths of her native people it also
showed many images emblematic of Australia, like the platypus and the
kangaroo. They shipped all 67x61” of it
in its original frame to us in the states.
Carpet snake
Uluru rising from the plain
It took us several days to recuperate after
the flight back to Sydney, the daylong flights to St. Louis and then the drive home. Seeing these two countries up close was
special, but we decided that Olivia was not the company with whom to book road
trips. With 40 to 70 women, too much
time was spent at rest stops even when we were able to use the men’s as well as
the women’s toilets.
Back at the lake, I had a huge backlog of
work. We had been gone for the better
part of three weeks, arriving back in March.
I gave Diane her assignment for the rest of 2000. She was to get the house in Columbia built. It meant she would need to make many trips from
the lake to Columbia. So far, the ground
on the new house was being shaped and the forms laid for the foundation.
I contacted a real estate agent at the lake
to place our Sweetwater Drive house on the market. It was even advertised in the Wall Street
Journal. We did finally get a decent offer
from a couple who already lived on the other side of the lake and loved Frank
Lloyd Wright houses. It would have been
perfect except that it was contingent upon them selling their house. Unfortunately, the early 2000’s saw a small
recession and mortgage interest rates were still high. The real estate market at the lake was not
good. I was not going to break even, let
alone make money on this property.
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