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Wednesday, September 28, 2022

"The Ghosts of Crestview Manor" by Julianna Rowe

The Ghosts of Crestview Manor   Property of Julianna Rowe                                                                    The Life Story of Katerina 

Chapter Six: Dr. Pig.......

I must backtrack a few years for my following error in judgment to be understood.  Some would say it was an excuse.  No. How can people excuse themselves for something they did or did not know they were doing? It takes time to evolve; sadly, some need to learn through life's hard knocks. Do I wish I had been able to rise above my raising?  Sure. But the cells needed were not there, so the Universe had to use Plan C.

My father bought me a horse when I was fifteen years old.   Her name was Sally.  She was a lazy stocky pinto, but lazy was suitable for someone who had never ridden horses.   That is until one day, while riding, walking down the old farm lane toward the barn, she spooked and bolted. My skinny friend and I were riding double bareback.  She flew off the rear and landed like a feather.  Not me; as usual in life, I hung on as I slid sideways down and around her neck while continuing to hang onto her face halter. So, she kicked me to get me off her face!   I fell a mere two feet, but somehow those two feet fractured my left arm, swelling like angry storm waters in a raging river.

The local Dr. Pig, we will call him, tended to the healing of my arm while having dishonorable advances toward me.  Back to my Grandfather's relative in Colorado, right? My God, I was only sixteen years old. Back then, sixteen to a man was perfect.  Note the songs; She Was Only Sixteen by Sam Cooke; Your Sixteen Your Beautiful and Your Mine by Johnny Burnett; Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen by Neil Sedaka; Tramps and Thieves by Cher; Stray Cat Blues by the Stones and many more.  Basically, songs promoted the sexual permissiveness of young women.

Then during my physical therapy sessions, he began making more advances. Massaging my arm up to and under my arm, obviously close to my breasts.  I was so frightened, not to mention frozen I never returned to his office for years.  As well as, I never completed the healing therapy for my arm he oversaw. Back then, Physical Therapy was at your local GP's office.

He never gave up!  I re-connected with him years later as a physician during the abusive phase of my marriage to Ronnie Lee.  Dr. Pig had an excellent bedside manner, especially if he thought he could get you in it, and he eventually did.  He used the horrible situation I was in to use me.  I felt somewhat important seeing the infamous local surgeon, even if it was behind closed doors. A far "cry" from where I had been and was. Where else was I to get uplifted kudos? My family? My husband? His family? NOT! So, the Pig and I had a quiet affair for some time.  He told me all his troubles and vice versa. How sad I look back to see my lack of ability to see reality. At least I didn't have to deal with a Procto!!

I have always used the analogy of a man riding a motorcycle to a man’s need for a woman.  He rides with his legs spread, high handlebars giving him a sense of power, the gas tank, you, between his legs, revving his engine as he shifts his gears to the final ultimate ride!  He has found a home for hairy, my dears!!   And so, it was Dr. Pig who did also, I am embarrassed to say.

As time passed, I was hospitalized twice by him.  Once for pneumonia and later in life for the embarrassing hemorrhoidectomy. I must laugh at that one, considering I feel he made an “ass” of me in my ignorant neediness.

Until the time my father was hospitalized with a life-threatening condition.  I felt it was my KARMA and feared my father would die because of my sin. But no, Dr. Pig saved his life in little town USA hospital with all its/our secrets.

I knew he had more problems than I did somewhere inside my mind.  But in retrospect, I realize he had started his sick mental takedown of me years previously when I was sixteen.  One of those conquest things, in particular men.  Again, I did what was expected of me…..although my payoff believed I was bettering myself when in reality, I was digging another hole I’d have to deal with at some point in time, probably still do somewhere on the CD of life inside my head that no one sees or dreams or feels but me.  He was a band-aide for an open wound in my life.  As a professional, he could and should have tried to set me on an uphill course rather than push me further down the destructive rabbit hole I had already set in motion or was born into?? Heck, I wasn’t just falling; I was on a collision course.  I guess I was ready-made for him.  I was looking for an external answer to an internal problem.  I never stopped trying to make that method work for many years.

Dr. Pig moved from his little town shrine and remains an excellent unhappy surgeon who never figured life out.  From what I heard via the grapevine of Facebook, he was a cruel husband to his new wife.  At least I missed that bullet!

I continued with Ronnie Lee for a time, and to my knowledge, no one ever knew about the doctor and the young girl who didn’t realize her potential.  In my later years, when I visit the old small town, the old folks look at me and smile somewhat understandingly. Maturity shows us our genuine connection with one another even when it seems too late to use it in ways more beneficial to our lives.  It is possibly a step towards the level we will live in our next life. I can only hope and believe.

Ronnie Lee was having an affair after affair.  I had caught him many times, but I didn’t leave.  I was on a mission to fix his lousy reflection of himself. I think I wanted to be for others what no one had been for me, but that usually is ineffective and merely stole what little energy I had to start with.

One of his affairs was with the woman who lived behind us. One day I was doing dishes looking out the window, and saw them throwing crab apples at each other and giggling like children. It couldn't get more obvious than that. He would play with her little boy and take him in the truck he drove for a living, leaving his son Robbie behind.  Robbie was rejected many times by his father in his tender years and shot at with a gun in his teen years. Yes, by his father.

Ronnie Lee was not a good person mentally or physically, but then I also had my emotional curses going on.  Ronnie Lee had a bleeding ulcer, so he said.  One time while drunk and after he had hit me several times, he was on his knees crying for sympathy. He said he had thrown up blood…. so I called 9 1 1.   I knew he was simply trying to get out of how abusive he had been that day.  Our family doctor, not Dr. Pig.... knew how he treated me and figured he was lying about the blood because he needed redemption for hitting me the day before.

Doc said, “Let’s see how sick he really is?”

He ordered tubes for every orifice of Ronnie's body.  I was thrilled.  I thought it might make a difference, but, of course, it did not.   From somewhere in my mind, I had made another wrong decision.  Not to leave him but to get pregnant once more and then leave.  This was my new mission.  What was I thinking?  I will tell you.  I felt that my firstborn Robbie needed a brother or sister.  I believed Robbie shouldn’t be alone in this world; if anything happened to me, he would have blood family.  So, I enticed Ronnie Lee.... and got pregnant.  He said the child wasn’t his, but it was.  Ronnie was also a pathological liar; therefore, he believed everything he said.  He was also diagnosed as a sociopath.  I was planning to leave as his behavior was becoming more destructive, and I was terrified of him.  I recall one day, he asked me to sit in the driver’s seat of our car while he did something to repair the engine.  Hood up and me behind the wheel in the driveway.  I wanted to kill him.  That was the only time I ever wanted to seriously kill anyone.  All I had to do was step on the gas and run over him, but I did not.  I left him and returned to the frying pan farm with my parents.  They were not my favorite people, but “it “was all I had.

Since Robbie's birth, my mother became even more controlling, telling me everything I did wrong for or with him.  No, I didn’t; I loved that little boy with all my heart.  He was the cutest and sweetest boy in the world to me.  My mother would complain I dressed him wrong and would physically take him away from me.  I couldn’t do anything right, according to her.  She was cruel, and I was living with her and expecting another child there.

One day Ronnie Lee called the farm and wanted to talk to me. I said, fine…..so Mother and Dad reluctantly dropped me off at our friend's home, where Ronnie Lee was waiting.  My Dad was uncomfortable with this situation, but I told him I would be fine.  They drove away, and I went inside.  Another man owned the house, but when I came in, he left the room for the kitchen to give us privacy, or so I thought.  That is when Ronnie Lee began to beat me up even though I was seven months pregnant.  He kicked me in the stomach and threw me all around the room.  I remember being more terrified than I had ever been. I realized he would kill me, so he didn't have to pay for another "kid."

I loved that baby inside me.  The man that owned the home would not help me even though I cried out for help.  He hid and watched the beating of the pregnant woman. I prayed as hard as I had ever prayed for my parents to return.  And they did!! I have no idea why they did, but they did.  I suspect it was my father’s intuition.  My Father and I have spiritual sensing, and it paid off.  When Ronnie Lee saw my parents return and pull up in front of the house, he ran out the back door like a scared rabbit.  Dad told me he just had a feeling, and I thank God for that GUIDE or ANGEL messenger who got through the veil to my dad.

I divorced the bastard in 1972.  I was in my early twenties living back at the funny farm with one four-year-old and expecting another.  It was life nightmare number twenty-two, plus I developed severe anxiety, making breathing difficult. The stress was unbelievable.  Mother had taken over entirely with Robbie, and her perfectionism and narcissism were horrible.  Dad just mumbled and went about his business outside.

My ninth-month pregnant, I decided to ride my bike into town, thinking I would go into labor and get it over with.   It was sweltering, and I was about halfway to town when I realized I had made a dangerous mistake that could hurt my baby and me.    Thank God again because along came my dad in his old blue truck because he was worried about me.  He put my bike in the back and me in the front, and we went home, no words spoken.

My parents hosted a party a day or two after the bicycle incident.  The gathering was about advertising the program and products of a multi-level marketing company mother had signed up with.  Something like Shaklee, I think. 

My luck, I went into labor around seven p.m.   I was in the upstairs bedroom, deciding to wait until the contractions were good and strong. I wondered if I would sit at that hospital all night again like the last time. Enema's, poking, prodding, and aloneness!  By the time anyone came up and noticed, I was really in labor, meaning seven centimeters dilated.   Mother drove me to the local hospital, dropped me off, and returned to her party.

A nurse named Mrs. Schumann spent the entire night with me.   She was the mother of a lovely boy I graduated with named Jimmy Don.   I will never forget her.  No one ever did anything nice for me like she did.  I mean Auntie brought me nice used clothes…. I can’t think of anything else, even though I am sure there were more decent memories.

I was in the delivery room with Dr. Reiner, who had just informed me the baby’s head was crowning, when I decided to QUIT and mentally fell apart. I told Dr. Reiner I couldn’t do it…. I had an awful life, no way to care for my poor baby.  Old Doc Reiner left the crowning baby, walked up and stood near my head, bent over, and asked me if I wanted to give my baby away.

I said, “No.”

He said, “Then let’s do this; you can do this!” 

He continued cheering me on like I was his favorite football team.   And so I did.   Richard (Richie) was born that night with me and the Doc and his nurses.   I loved Richie so much.   He was six pounds thirteen ounces with black hair and blue eyes.  He was a gentle baby and a gentleman. 

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

"Blessed by Calling the Things that Are Not as Though They Are" Written by Tommye Allen

 



"Blessed by Calling the Things That Are Not as Though They Are"
Written by Tommye Allen Inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Narrated by Julianna Rowe, aka, Diane Ogden

You may find more writings at 
http://wwwdearonelovegod.blogspot.com

Thursday, September 22, 2022

"Blessed by the Words You Speak" written by Tommye Allen


     
"Blessed by the Words You Speak"  

Written by Tommye Allen, inspired by the Holy Spirit

Narrated by Julianna Rowe, aka Diane Ogden

You can find more writings at http://www.dearonelovegod.blogspot.com

Comments are welcome at dianeogden.ogden@gmail.com

Monday, September 19, 2022

"Blessed Beyond Belief" written by Tommye Allen


 Blessed Beyond Belief

Written by Tommye Allen, inspired by the Holy Spirit

Narrated by Julianna Rowe, aka Diane Ogden

More writings are available at http://www.dearonelovegod.blogspot.com   

Comments are welcome at dianeogden.ogden@gmail.com

Friday, September 16, 2022

Saturday, September 10, 2022

The Ghosts of Crestview Manor (Re-written) by Julianna Rowe

CHAPTER ONE:   Reflecting 


                I was standing at the sink washing the usual stack of daily dishes when my mind began to wander.  You know, like when you're driving, and it happens, you forget how you got where you were going.

              I began thinking of my Nana. 


 What was she really like?  And upon reflecting, I recall thinking she was more important to me than I was to her.  I had never realized it until that day when my mind left the building.  Oddly, she reminds me of my best friend Jacque, the finisher of my emotional ties to Nana. Jacque came into my life in my twenties and replaced the lost love and abandonment I had felt from my Nana. I believe she is the friend I called into my life to finish the incorrect dream of who I thought Nana was but wasn’t, although Nana was a woman of interest and a positive force in my life.  I met her when I was four years old when my Grandfather brought her to our home.  Nana was his second wife, and she was beautiful.  Auburn hair and skin the color of milk.  I had never felt skin so soft, nor had I seen such large breasts.  Her petite frame glistened with wealthy energy, just like her long red fingernails.  She wore furs and fine linens and draped her gentle demeanor.  She adorned the most delicate gold jewelry on her soft, gentle skin.  She was class, and I spotted it at my young age.  As I grew up, she would take me to the finest stores and buy me the finest clothes.  My first pair of high heels was at age twelve for my confirmation against my mother’s wishes, of course.  The story goes she was engaged to Gene Autry when she met my Grandfather.  But then the story goes, Grandfather rode with Poncho Via.

            My Grandparents lived in the Crestview addition on the side of a mountain in Los Angeles.  The backyard was landscaped with walls cascading down the mountain's side.  Of course, it was just a large hill, but it was a mountain to me.  When you stood in the living room or on the deck in the evening, it was a sight to behold.  The entire city of Austin lit up like a million stars.  A place most can only dream of living.  A huge bear rug lay on the floor of the living room in front of the fireplace.  Nana shot that bear herself.  I have a photo of the kill as they were avid hunters.  They spent weeks on horseback camping in the Wyoming Range, and that bear rug was to be mine upon her death.  I spent many a day lying on it, looking into its glass eyes and touching the terrifying teeth with no fear. 


I was a princess, and I had a castle.  My bedroom consisted of four twin poster beds, all hand carved from Europe.  I was surrounded by a dressing table with silver mirrors and deep pink satin quilted bedspreads and my private bathroom.  I can remember the smell to this day.  That particular smell of elegance.  The drapes were heavy and consoling. I had unique dolls, but they had to stay at Nana’s house, which was fine with me, for they had mink coats just like hers.  Every Christmas, we would find the latest toys under the tree.  A fond memory is the Posie Doll who walked and another who talked. My life was complete. 

           My destiny was already secured at such a perfect age.  I was too young to understand, but the drinking was all around.  Grandfather would do his native Indian dances after a few shots of Canadian Club.  One night while preparing for a dinner party, I was in the kitchen with Nana when she dropped the entire bowl of tossed salad to the floor. A carpeted floor, no less. She gently and ever so quietly whispered with a hint of a giggle while nudging me to help her pick it up and be presented it to her guests later that evening.  Naturally, I was told to keep this to myself, which I did, and I did not partake in eating that salad.  I never forgot the salad incident and later realized it was an alcohol-induced situation.  Everything was hidden that was real.  Life was a fantasy to me in those years, and I never saw the reality of it for many decades. Sometimes ancestry cells are cemented within our minds.

            One day my Grandparents moved.  I never questioned it as I wasn’t age-appropriate to notice at the time.  They moved to a friendly neighborhood suburb of Los Angeles.  Certainly not like Crestview, but to me, all was the same.  This particular home had a “summer house” adjacent to it, adjoining to that a “utility house” where laundry, freezers, and another entire kitchen lived.  Stacks of bulk groceries were stored in this small house, along with another bathroom and shower.  The summer house was a marvel of everything imaginable for comfort.

            A cowboy, cowgirls dream.  Leather furniture with studded edges of brass, lamps made from the actual hooves, and legs of the animals taken on the hunts.  The lampshade sections were sewn together with rawhide string depicting photographs of the very animals whose foot or leg was lighting this museum of Wyoming hunting and Indian relics.  The walls were covered with Moose, Elk, Ram, Deer, Antelope, and Bear busts.  Bookcases wrapped around one entire side of the five hundred square foot room and housed a collection of novels, history books, and National Geographic’s.  Along another wall was a large table.  On that table was an Indian teepee approximately five feet tall. Running through the teepee was an actual operating train set that stopped, started, and went through mountains and grain mills where its cars were loaded and unloaded.  What a thrill for a child; it was my favorite place.   The smell of leather danced through the air from the saddles that hung in one corner, not to mention the gun collection.  Grandfather taught me to shoot when I was about ten years old.  He took me out into the woods, where he told me to lay on the ground on my tummy.  He then placed a pillow against my shoulder and positioned a twelve-gauge shotgun on that pillow. Little did I know what was coming.  Indeed we should have started out slower, but that was not Granddaddy’s style.  So I aimed and pulled that trigger, and my little body shot backward pillow and all at the least a couple feet.  I liked it!  I also got to shoot the old colt 45. I didn’t know which I liked better.  I learned to aim and shoot quite well during that part of my life which has come in handy at local carnivals. 

            Grandfather and Nana went to all the grand openings of the finest Hotels in California, Texas, and Virginia.   They hunted on President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ranch, I know for sure because I have his old moving pictures of it.  They took my parents along, and President Lyndon Johnson’s butler cared for their every need.  He wanted to take my Father’s boots and socks off, something Father wasn’t so used to, yet Daddy told that story repeatedly till he died. Yes, they lived the high life and wore the finest linens and knew the who’s who to do it.

            Grandfather built me an authentic playhouse in the back of the Summerhouse.  Genuine, meaning it had its own electricity, its own little porchlight, running water into a tiny kitchen sink, and a table and chairs.  I would take my dolls with their mink coats to my own little house, where I felt like a total princess.  And then disaster struck.

            No, he didn’t die.  He moved two of my cousins into his home to live, and he forgot about me. Abandoned. He was a master narcissist……he had worked very hard to get my brother and me from our parents, and when that didn’t work, he moved on.  He conned two of his daughters out of one of their children, one a boy and the other a girl.  He and Nana couldn’t have children, so they made the next best move.  They not only abandoned my brother and me in the earthly realm of his scheme…. but in my heart also.

            My dolls and their minks were no longer mine but given to someone else.  My room was no longer mine but passed on.  My playhouse, my bear rug, my satin bedspreads, my train set and teepee, my shooting lessons, my Grandfather and Nana had moved on to others.  Abandoned.

            How was I to know it was all about control.  In every area, Grandfather wanted control to the extent of taking someone else’s children.  They, Nana and Pop, couldn’t have my brother and me, so the fake love was over, along with the monetary gifts and possessions. All were gone, and I took it as a severe rejection because no one ever explained to me what had happened.  I thought I wasn’t good enough. If I had only known everything Grandfather ever did was to ultimately benefit him.

            It all started when I was five, and my Grandfather and Nana would make regular trips to Virginia to visit my parents at home. My father and his brother built by hand from the ground up.  Granddad always had a personal mental goal, and these trips were to flash his money, jewelry, and cars until he enticed my parents to leave everything familiar to them for his exemplary life in California.  And so they did.  But first, we drove downtown to the local Chevrolet Dealership and bought a brand new shiny 1956 Chevy Belair, crème and bronze.   My parents sold the house Dad and his brother built, packed our belongings, and headed for California and a better life.  That was the beginning of an odd string of events that would end when my parents told Grandfather and Nana they could not have my brother and me, their children.  The promises made to my parents of the high life were never seen.  My Father was overworked and underpaid.  That gave Granddad the control he needed to get the outcome he was after.  It didn’t work.  At age thirteen, they packed our belongings once again, rented a U-Haul that Father pulled behind his 1956 Blue Chevy truck, and headed across the country back to Virginia with one cat in the back seat, a Chihuahua in the front seat, and a bird cage somewhere in between with Pete, the parakeet in it. 

            Father’s truck wasn’t in the best shape to pull the overloaded U-haul, and it showed.  When we hit the Ozark Mountain Range, “Old Blue” gave it all she had, but twice we lost sight of Father and my brother and had to turn around only to find “Old Blue” couldn’t make it up the mountain with her load.  Father had to coast back down and give the old truck a long head start to make it up before the hill, and he did, but just barely and ever so slowly.  I now know the stress they encountered during those years in California and the trip back.  

          My Aunt, my Father’s sister, had loaned them the money to get back home.  There wasn’t any extra for breakdowns of any sort.  Not to mention the breakdown I wanted and deserved to have, considering I had left my life and friends forever.

            I had a boyfriend back in California.  A really nice young man.  Indeed too old for me, but never-the-less we had a connection.  Even at that tender age, I thought I was in love.  I believe I was to the extent it was possible.  I was barely a teen by a few months, and he was fifteen.  We were in Jr. High, and I was fully grown physically at 34-24-34.  Not the best thing to happen to a pretty young girl at that age, along with looking much older altogether.  Add the fact living in a large city is different than in a small farm community we were heading for.  Regardless, it was a sad day to leave Harold Boyer.  Every day after school, we would meet at the local soda fountain.  He would buy us a soda with two straws.  We would sit and stare at each other for a long time and giggle.  We would ride on his white moped up into the mountains overlooking Lake Henry, the wind blowing against us, giving me the opportunity to hold on around his waist as tight as possible.  He was tall and lean with beautiful black shiny, slicked hair.   He was of French descent, making his skin look like a perfect tan year round.  He was a cross between Elvis and the Fonz.  His gentleness came through each kiss he presented me. Yes, gave it like it was a gift.  (I  have no clue where I told my Mother I was, but I sure didn’t tell her I was on a moped in the hills)  We never entered into sexual relations, of course.  I realize the age sounds out of line with the acts, but even as I sit here today at age 52 (re-typing it at age 70, 74), I remember him.  I remember the bond we shared as good friends.  On my last night in California, he came over to my Grandparents to say goodbye, and I will never forget he cried.  One last hug and one last gentle kiss with tears falling between tender lips, then a sudden break as he walked away, his tears fell silently.  I never saw him again until I was fifteen and I visited California.  I hear he married a girl named LeVonne, who was in one of our Jr. High classes when I lived there.  I wonder where they are?  Someone said Sacramento. I have fond memories of my Junior High School years; I have a few of them as Facebook friends. 

Friday, September 9, 2022

Could l have this dance #2 by Alexa and Julianna Rowe

Let me reiterate:  I didn't practice.  I just love to sing, and I am old now, so I sometimes don't want to sing alone. It's like having Thanksgiving alone. Thus:  Here I am with my four faithful listeners.  I could post a recipe, but I don't cook much anymore.  I could post my grandkids, but many live far away, and I can't walk the length of the zoo anymore with the ones that live close.  
I could post how I accidentally drank pure vanilla this morning at 4:30 am in the dark, thinking it was my Diet Coke.  Gad, that was bad!  Or I can share my singing as it isn't the worse. 
I have cancer in my thyroid.  So when that is removed, I may not be able to sing at all.  Who knows.  
This is Alexa and me!  No special effects but that would have helped.  Not to mention I do not know how to edit audios. No matter, I still enjoy singing with all my heart.  In the car, I sound like Adele. Too bad you can't hear me then.   





My Executive Order $$$$$$$$$$.......... by Julianna Rowe

  My Executive Order J$$$$$$$$$$ .......by Julianna Rowe Somewhere along the way, politics changed my signature. I realize that sounds like ...