Chapter 26

The relationship between Anne Coulter and Walt Connor blossomed pretty quickly. Too quickly for some of us to be prepared for the fall out that it would cause. Two weeks after they first began dating, Anne moved into Walt's apartment with him. Walt was fifty three years old, and Anne was thirty seven. The one thing they both had going for them was that they each accepted the other. Sometimes, when your life has been full of disappointments and hurts, being accepted becomes enough.

Aunt Clara called me to complain, arguing that Anne was deliberately going after Walt to spite her. When I asked her for clarification of what she meant, she hung up on me. That was the first inkling I had that Aunt Clara might have been romantically fond of Walt herself. Beyond question, if what I feared turned out to be true, I was going to have a big complication with the food distribution program. Aunt Clara had never shown the slightest interest in men in the past. I had just assumed she only liked girls.

Walt was a big man, meaty, and more than a just a tad overweight. He looked like what he was, an ex jock who'd gone to seed. Too much good food, not nearly enough physical exercise, and a propensity for having too many drinks on an almost daily basis. For the past several months though, Walt had been getting himself back into shape.

He accomplished this by spending long hours at work, delivering the food, then coming back to the warehouse, helping Aunt Clara with all the work of packaging up the groceries for the next day's delivery. There was a lot of heavy lifting to do too, and Walt was the one who insisted on doing all of it.

In addition to all of this physical activity, Walt was laying off all his drinking. He was too tired at first, from all the unaccustomed physical exertion, to even stay up after dinner, watching television. That tiredness prevented him from drinking his usual four or five after dinner cocktails. After awhile, he started feeling better at the end of his workday, but he also found he didn't miss not drinking. He began deliberately taking better care of himself, wanting to feel even better than he then did.

Aunt Clara and Anne Coulter weren't the only ones to notice the dramatic improvement in Walt's appearance. Georgia Connor was quick to learn of the change in Walt's domestic situation as well. It sometimes happens that you don't place much value on something, or on someone, until after you see that someone else does. That happened with Georgia. Suddenly, now that someone else had shown an interest in him, she wanted Walt back.

All of this was taking place within the first two weeks of Walt and Anne's moving in with each other. It became a daily topic of conversation at our house, with Mama calling several times a day with her updates for Joyce.

By the time Christmas neared, it had turned into a love quadrangle, but only as far as Aunt Clara and Georgia were concerned. Walt and Anne kept pretty much to themselves, ignoring anyone except each other. It was somewhat comical that neither Georgia nor Aunt Clara had discussed their feelings with Walt. Everyone else heard all about their plight, but not the one person who was in a position to effect some sort of resolution to it.

I know that Anne knew that her sister had an attraction to Walt. I know it because she once admitted to me that this was her primary reason for saying yes to Walt when he first summoned up the courage to ask her to go out to dinner with him. She was angry at Clara's attitude, and at her, for not wanting her staying at her mother's house.

Of the three women, Anne was probably, physically, the least attractive. Her appearance had improved quite a bit when she was living in California, but both Georgia and Aunt Clara were very attractive women. Even at fifty, Georgia could still turn some heads with her face and figure. Aunt Clara was in her very early forties, and she too was a fine looking woman, especially when she allowed her hair to hang free, rather than having it all tied up behind her head in a bun.

The problem Aunt Clara had was her lack of experience with men. She didn't really know how to communicate her interest to Walt. Georgia's problem was the accumulated slights and hurts that she and Walt had inflicted, over the years, on each other.

Anne had neither of these problems. She liked men, liked sex, had quite a lot of experience, and was able to make that fact known to Walt, almost from the very beginning. The sexual relationship she'd enjoyed with Captain Webb had given her an appreciation for having some romantic attachment in her relationships.

In her youth, she had been overexposed to sex, but not to any of the trappings surrounding romantic attachment. She enjoyed those trappings, enjoyed being pursued, being appreciated as more than just an easy piece of ass. Walt was now the recipient of her favors, and quite happy to be that recipient.

Who knows how long the situation would have dragged on, or how it would have all impacted the food distribution program, or our group's domestic harmony, if Mama hadn't decided to meddle with it? No one knows, and they never will, because Mama did step right in and start to meddle.

The first thing she did was gather Aunt Clara and Georgia together for a lunch over at the country club. Up until then neither was aware that the other harbored any romantic interest in Walt. Mama and Georgia started right in, ordering cocktails at eleven thirty in the morning.

They introduced Aunt Clara to the joys of a late morning strawberry daiquiri. By one thirty, lunch forgotten, the three of them were well advanced in inebriation, and in the throes of what was fast becoming a critical examination and dissection of all that was wrong with men in general, and Walt in particular.

At three o'clock, the club manager came by to suggest that the ladies might want to take their discussion into one of the more private banquet areas. The ladies, with Georgia as their spokesperson, insisted that he "fuck off," and then told him to tell the bartender that they wanted yet another pitcher of strawberry daiquiri's.

At four, Hans arrived to help the country club staff carry the three, for the most part, unconscious, ladies down to their waiting limo. Aunt Clara and Georgia both ended up sleeping it off at Mama's house. The next morning, after Gerta had gotten all of them to eat a little something to go with the Bloody Mary's that Hans had prepared, the real planning for how to lure Walt away from Anne commenced.

Mama assigned to Hans and Gerta the task of doing all the buying of the groceries for the food distribution program. Gerta managed all of that from her kitchen, in a matter of a few hours, in between her lunch and dinner preparations. At eleven, the three women left for their appointment at a full service beauty parlor that Mama sometimes frequented over in Bolling. The next day, all three women went shopping for clothes, primarily for Aunt Clara, over in Springfield.

Mama's plan was to find other, more suitable, men, for Aunt Clara and for Georgia. Of course, meddler that she was, she didn't tell either woman her intentions. They both thought she was helping them to take Walt back from Anne's clutches.

Joyce was in on Mama's plan, right from the start, so she kept all of us informed of its progress. Brenda was rooting against Georgia getting back with Walt, knowing that the only reason her mother wanted him back was because she didn't want anyone else to have him. I wasn't rooting for anyone, or against anyone. I just hoped this could all be resolved without it necessitating any large changes to the food distribution program.

On December 17th, 1989, a Sunday, all of us boarded the charter that Dad had hired and flew out to California. All of us included Georgia and Aunt Clara, but not Walt and Anne.

The business meeting lodge Mama had rented was backed up to the Angeles National Forest, directly north of the town of Altadena. There was a nearby stable where you could rent horses for riding, and the lodge rental people had gone out and cut down a fifteen foot Christmas tree for us. There were eight bedrooms in the main house and twelve self contained cabins on the property. By the time we arrived, Hans, Gerta, Phil, Claire, and Thelma had a firm handle on everything. They were waiting for us with four limos and a pick up truck from the lodge, to carry us for the twenty-five mile journey to our retreat from the L.A. airport.

The flight out had been quick and smooth, and, because everything had already been prepared for our arrival, it was simply a matter of being shown to our rooms. Mama insisted that our group have the main lodge as our living area, saying it would be easier on the rest of them to get their rest, if all the children were in one place, and they were all somewhere else.

I noticed that it hadn't prevented her from having a crib placed in her cabin for April to sleep in. When Joyce asked her about the crib, Mama casually explained that she only had it there in case the noise of sleeping with all the other children proved too difficult for April to get her proper rest. It must have been proven to her satisfaction, because April spent all her nights sleeping in Mama's cabin

As crazy about April as Mama obviously was, it was my Dad who surprised me the most during our time in California. Two weeks away from the company was going to be the longest he'd ever been away from it. He did spend two or three hours a day on the phones with Myra, and had a fax machine installed in his room, but for him, this was as close to a pure vacation as he was ever likely to have.

What surprised me the most was the amount of time he spent with Derek and Bunny. Everyday, he took them out for a little stroll in one of the twin strollers. There were hiking paths and trails all around the lodge, and he would gather the two boys up right after breakfast, and they would be gone for an hour or two on their hike.

When they came back, usually both boys would be asleep in their stroller. In the afternoons, on two occasions, Dad asked me to come look at some parcels of land he was interested in.

There was a big land boom going on in Southern California at that time, and the prices were ridiculously high. On the second day we went looking at land, we drove all the way over to Kern County and looked at twelve small vacant parcels, in a place called Stallion Springs.

The lots were on a gently sloping hillside, and were owned by the widow of a banker. He had purchased the lots back in the late sixties, as a speculative investment, but there hadn't been the growth in the area that he had hoped for, so he had kept the parcels, paying the low property taxes, year after year.

His widow was attempting to convert her assets to cash as part of an estate plan she was putting together. The lady wanted to sell all twelve lots together, for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

Dad liked the area, and made an offer of one hundred fifty thousand for the land. Before we left, after numerous counter offers back and forth, Dad made the purchase at one sixty five.

The broker who showed us the land also had another listing for one larger, forty acre parcel, which I purchased for sixty two thousand dollars. I wasn't sure why I even wanted it, but we were out there looking at land together, and I figured I might as well buy something. It was sort of a souvenir of the time Dad and I spent together, something that would remind me of all of us taking such a nice vacation trip.

It was a nice trip too, as all of the different groups of us split off to do whatever they were interested in doing. We made sure that Irma, Connie, and Helen had plenty of time off in the early evenings to go out and see some of the sights of Southern California. We all spent one day at an amusement park called Magic Mountain, going on all the adult rides and enjoying the summer like weather outdoors. We had a day at the beach, and Dad and I played a round of golf at the Riviera Country Club, as a guest of one of the baking equipment vendors that Dad did business with.

We also went out for lunches and dinners, packing the whole gang up into the limos, and traveling to restaurants all around the valley that could handle a group of our size. The most amazing thing was the weather. Even on Christmas day, the temperature had to be somewhere in the seventies. Most of us were getting some tan from being out in the open like we were.

Georgia, Mama, and Aunt Clara went to a hot springs close by, and enjoyed a day filled with mud baths and massages, and seemingly unlimited complimentary champagne. All of my girls were pregnant, so they contented themselves with a day spent shopping for new maternity clothes. With the three nursery girls, and four double strollers, seven women and eight babies made the trip, in two limos, to the famous Rodeo Drive, for a whole morning of shopping.

Mama bought everyone Gucci handbags. I heard Helen telling Connie about watching another shopper spending twelve thousand dollars for one dress. After worrying for awhile that this had upset her, I decided not to say anything about it. What could you say? To the woman who spent the twelve thousand dollars on the one dress, twelve thousand might be less to her than twenty dollars was to Helen. We were just tourists, we weren't planning on becoming part of the Los Angeles lifestyle.

When Jerry and Kitty Carstairs came over to visit us, it was easy to see that they had become part of the L.A. lifestyle. From the clothes they were wearing and the way they were speaking, it was easy to see they had both become acclimated to their new lives in Tinsel town. Gary seemed the same as he was back in Kansas though, except for his being more self assured and confident than I remembered him being before they had left.

Jerry had finished his screenplay, and had been hired to write another, original screenplay, based on a story idea that he had come up with. He was being paid on a graduated basis, depending on how far along the script got. What he was currently working on was something called a treatment. If the producers liked his treatment, then they would pay him even more money to proceed to the next level of script development.

Jerry told us there were many scriptwriters who always had new ideas in development, ideas that never became movies. They made a good living, he said, just from presenting their script ideas and working up different treatments, all based on a single premise of theirs. Jerry had become more relaxed, and his conversation seemed much funnier to me. Kitty told Emily that she was suspicious that Jerry was keeping a mistress on the side.

We all flew back to Kansas on New Year's Day. We all enjoyed the time we spent there, but we knew that none of us were meant to be California people. We did each buy several pair of sun glasses in California at this outdoor flea market. The prices were so reasonable. I think we bought thirty six pairs for less than a hundred dollars.

The first thing we found out, as soon as we got back, was that Walt and Anne had gotten married on Christmas Eve.

There was a phone message left on our answering machine, from Richard, trying to get in touch with Brenda, to ask her about who Anne was.

We had invited Richard to come down to the lodge to spend Christmas with us, but he declined our invitation, telling us that he needed to stay up in Monterey to work in the restaurants.

Richard seemed very happy with the schooling he was getting, and had kept in touch with both his father, and with Brenda. He was using Brenda as a conduit to communicate through to his mother. Georgia was still having difficulty dealing with her son's siding with his father.

Back at school, I was still trying to locate my first brain trust member. I had put up the contest terms on the bulletin boards on campus, but they had only generated three entries. Only one entry had sufficient thought put into it to warrant any follow up action taken by me. The student in question was named Paul Carter, and his idea for testing to find an ideal candidate had involved a complicated obstacle course of task challenges, culminating with a single best candidate. I liked the idea, but there was nothing contained in the way of specific detail or about how to accomplish setting up any of these challenges.

I took him to lunch, and halfway through the meal, I had satisfied myself that Paul wasn't a candidate for my management program. I did loan him twenty dollars, and that was the last I ever saw of him.

It was Emily that brought home my first two legitimate brain trust candidates, and it was in the first week we were back from our Christmas break. They were sisters who had just transferred over from Oklahoma State University. Dale and Edna Pipkin were their names, and Dale was a year older than her sister.

Emily had found them in the student union, and had invited them both home with her. The girls had been looking at the listings for part time jobs that were posted on the bulletin board at the student union. Joyce had told all the X's to keep an eye out for two new nursery workers for us.

When I came home after my last class, I came into the living room to find Joyce, Emily, Brenda, and Shirley sitting there talking to these two young black women. Joyce had grown to her full height of five foot one by then. (Five one and a half if you had asked her) Joyce was at least two inches taller than either of the sisters. Dale was twenty years old, a junior, majoring in clinical psychology. Edna, "Eddie" to her friends, was nineteen, a junior as well, majoring in whatever it was that would eventually have led her to becoming a theoretical physicist.

The first things that registered with me were that they were female, short, and black. Right after that, I noticed they both had heads that seemed too large for their bodies. Next, I noticed that they both had very large breasts for their body types. Joyce saw me come through the living room entrance. She stood up.

"Kenny, watch this. Stand up you guys." She used her hands to motion Dale and Eddie up, then moved over between them, demonstrating her clear height advantage. "What do you notice, Kenny?"

"They both have much bigger tits than you do?" I laughed, and so did the X's and our two guests. Joyce didn't laugh.

"What else? Look closely."

"Neither one looks pregnant yet?" This comment didn't get any laughs from my very pregnant audience.

"Height. What do you notice about their height?" I could see that Joyce wanted me to acknowledge her superior height. She stood there, barefoot, bouncing up and down on her toes, frustrated that I didn't comment on what was so plainly obvious.

"They are both the same height?" I knew that this was the last comment I could make before Joyce came over and punched me.

"I'm taller than both of them, Kenny. A lot taller." Joyce was smiling, happy with her accomplishment.

"These girls both look a lot younger than you, Joyce. How tall were you when you were their age?" I mistakenly thought the sisters were twins. I was just having some fun with her, not realizing, at the time, that I was spoiling Joyce's big height moment. She seldom came into close contact with other adults shorter than she was, and here were two, both at the same time.

"But, I'm taller than them now, and they've both stopped growing." Joyce seemed happy again, knowing that she had proved her case to me.