Chapter 9

Donald Meets an Auburn Hair Beauty

When I arrived in Norman, Oklahoma, I rented a furnished room from an elderly lady about three miles from the campus of the University of Oklahoma. The room had an inexpensive microwave oven and a small refrigerator. The bathroom was a few feet down the hall. For the first week, I familiarized myself with Norman and the University campus. Without a car, I did a lot of walking.

I found a place where men went for day labor jobs. Although, mostly minimum wage, I thought this was ideal since identification was seldom necessary. Most of the men were transients. I discovered it was necessary to show up early if you hoped to be hired. After several days, I was hired for a day by a local rancher that raised quarter horses and quickly discovered the value of work-gloves. At noon, I showed him my blistered hands and asked if it was alright if I just worked a half-day. I told him I lived close and would walk home. He was nice and told me I needed to wear gloves. He told me that if he had realized my hands were so soft he would have given me a pair to wear.

I bought work-gloves and stayed away a couple of days to let my blisters disappear. For the next several days, I was passed over for men that were bigger and stronger. Then the rancher arrived again needing someone to clean stalls. I told him that I realized I wasn’t as big and strong as most of the others but that I really needed the job and while my needs should not be a factor, I would make it worth his while by donating my time for the second day.

He said, “Okay, hop in the cab.” Then he said, “I see you bought some work-gloves.”

I replied, “Yes sir that is a lesson I don’t need to be taught twice.” At the end of the day, he paid me and I said, “Since I live so close, I will walk home.”

The next day I arrived at 7:30 am. and continued cleaning stalls. At 1:00 pm. I saw this young lady walking through the stable. When she reached my stall, I said in French, “Mademoiselle, I have truly been blessed by this opportunity to gaze upon such an auburn-haired beauty. You have truly brightened my day.”

She replied in French, “Thank you monsieur it is a nice day.”

“You speak French?” I said. “Mademoiselle, please forgive me, had I of known that you understand French, I would not have dared to be so forward.”

She smiled and said, “Don’t be sorry. A lady never minds a nice compliment.” Then she asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Donald. I am a day laborer.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m cleaning stalls.”

“I can see that, but why are you here?”

“Your father, I presume, hired me. I am just fulfilling my obligation.”

“How could he have hired you? He left early this morning for an auction.”

“He hired me yesterday. He already paid me in full. I am just working to fulfill the terms of our verbal contract.”

“Daddy paid you in advance?”

“Well yes and no. He paid me for working yesterday. Today I am donating my labor in consideration of his hiring me for yesterday in accordance with our agreement.” She gave me this funny look and walked back to her house.

A couple of hours later her father returned home and a few minutes after that she returned with her father. “Young man, my Patricia tells me you are donating your work today. Is that right?”

“Yes, Sir! It is like I explained yesterday. Probably because I am not as big and strong as many of the day laborers I am not being selected for work. So far you are the only one that has hired me. I find it rather depressing to show up early each day and then just returning home to be idle. If I am going to pay rent and buy food, I desperately need to work to earn money. If offering to work two days for one day’s pay will help get me hired then that is far preferable to not working at all.”

“Young man, I have always agreed with the saying, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” but I don’t feel right about taking someone’s labor and not paying him.”

“Sir, per my verbal offer that you appeared to accept, I have already been paid. Certainly, I consider it unethical to do less than what I agreed. Of course, I do not wish to cause you any anxiety if you are not comfortable with the situation. But absolutely, I am not attempting to coerce or suggest that you should make additional payment. Because, I assure you, I would not trade my honor and integrity for a few dollars.”

“Have you been in an institution or are you wanted by the law for anything?” he asked.

“No sir and I can also assure you that I have never been in an institution or in trouble with the law. I have never been arrested, except, for a couple of citations for minor traffic violations, a few years back when I had a driver’s license. The worst crime I ever committed was when I was thirteen and I learned a valuable lesson that crime doesn’t pay.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I was in the eighth grade in a small town. I removed the access panel on some ventilation ducking leading to girls’ locker room and showers. I did manage to get a slight view. However, the maintenance people replaced the panel and I couldn’t get out. The school closed for the night, it got dark. I was scared and got so thirsty, and I needed to pee so badly. I was afraid I was going to die. When I didn’t return home after school my parents got frantic and eventually called the law. When the school reopened the next day, I had crawled back up to a vent in the girl’s locker room. Finally, a girl came in and I cried, Help.” Of course, everyone was relieved to find me. I was so pathetic—scared out of my wits and crying. They printed the story in the local paper—my parents were mortified and you can only imagine the joking I had to endure. Otherwise, other than the scolding I received from my parents, the only penalty was detention after school for a month.”

Both father and daughter were laughing. His daughter (I heard her father call her Patricia) said, “Daddy, it’s adorable. Can I keep it?”

The father ended up giving me a job for $300 a week on a week’s trial basis. I talked him into hiring me as an independent contractor—I would set my own schedule and method. He would provide general guidelines. This avoided withholdings and employee taxes. On the W-9 under Taxpayer Identification Number, I wrote, “Applied For.” I paid a transit some money and opened a non-interest, business checking account as “Don’s Services.” The transit provided the bank with identification and SSN and I provided a computer-generated signature. Using a pin number, I could withdraw cash from an ATM. As a result, the rancher could pay me by check leaving no identification trail to me. I gave my last name as Smith instead of Smyth. At least for a few months, I did not intend for Chris or anyone else to be able to find me.

The rancher only expected me to work thirty plus hours a week. I worked fifty, up to ten hours each day including Saturdays. I would feed and water horses, clean stalls, do light maintenance and wash and wax their vehicles. On my own, I would find the things that needed to be done and I made sure I was not idle. Except for noon and lunch, whenever I needed a break I would work on the activity report that I submitted at the end of each day. I was handling all the minor details that, otherwise, he would have to deal with so he kept me on.

They had a small 750 square foot house that had been trashed by a previous ranch hand. It was basically sound and looked much worse than it was. It was livable so I talked the rancher into letting me live in it and I would pay him $100 a week in rent, the same as my current rent. Instead of paying him, however, I asked that I use the rent to buy materials to make repairs. I would furnish receipts and my labor would be free and on my own time. Altogether, the cost of the material for the repairs would be about $2,600 and then the place would really be nice. And my labor would be worth more than twice that. After a week he could see the value of my efforts so he just went ahead and paid for all the materials. Two weeks later when I was about two-thirds completed, he was extremely pleased with how much improvements he was seeing and told me he was lowering the rent to $50 per week and to consider it a raise.

From the time I first saw Patricia. I decided I was in love. I knew she was not interested in a day laborer. However, if I could keep surprising her in most unusual ways that were not unpleasant and often amusing and beneficial then I would perk her interest. I would be a puzzle she would want to solve. That was the reason I spoke French. Just to be around her is the reason I got the rancher to give me a job and the reason I work so many hours. The pay was secondary.

Fall semester started and Patricia begin classes as a senior at O.U. I would often talk to the rancher’s wife, Mrs. Keller, for a few minutes. She is a very nice lady and before long she seemed to trust and have full confidence in me. One afternoon I was talking to her when Patricia arrived home not too happy. “What the matter dear?” Mrs. Keller asked.

“I may have to drop Calculus II. It’s too hard,” Patricia responded.

“Perhaps I can help,” I suggested.

“How could a damn day laborer know anything about Calculus?” Patricia spat.

“Be nice dear,” Mrs. Keller admonished.

“I gave Patricia my most dejected and hurt look and said, “Obviously we day laborer’s cannot be expected to have the intellectual capacity of nobility like you. However, sometimes we do by chance pick up tidbits of useful information. And, in any event, there is no dishonor in working even if it does not require your high level of intelligence. I don’t see how it would hurt for you to at least show it to me.” I knew Patricia would know better than to belittle the work of lower-level people.

“Oh, don’t get your feeling hurt. I didn’t mean it. I am just being a bitch.”

“So will you let me look?” I implored.

“Oooh!” Patricia said with a sigh. “You won’t understand it but you can look,” Patricia replied as she handed me the Calculus book and the composition tablet containing the problems she had been working on.

“You are right, I am sure it is far too complicated for me to understand. However, if you will forgive me for being presumptuous, I can imagine some suggestions that might be helpful. I can imagine that you should add the constants for the answer to indefinite integrals.”

She gave me another of her funny looks and said, “Oh, that’s right I forgot.”

“Then this next problem. I can imagine that it would be very simple to integrate if you set is up using polar instead of Cartesian coordinates. Also, on the next problem, I can imagine that if you used the trig substitution of x=5tanθ, it would be very easy to work. And finally, on your answer to this problem you worked, I can imagine that when you integrate x to some power such as n that you would divide by n+1 rather than n.”

“How can you possibly know all that?” Patricia questioned as she gave me the strangest look.

“Now, of course, you realize that I could not possibly know. However, I can imagine that I do and that my suggestions are valid. Anyway, I have taken enough of your time and I need to get back to work.” As I walked away I knew I was leaving a very befuddled autumn haired beauty.

Patricia went up to her room and, and using my suggestions, worked and corrected the problems. After a half-hour or so, she came downstairs and asked, “Mother, how would a day laborer know calculus?”

“I don’t know dear. Maybe he is just good at math.”

“Well, I would say he is very good! I spent over an hour trying to work those problems and Donald tells me how to work them after a couple of minutes. He even found my mistakes. I think that is bizarre.”

A couple of days later the autumn hair beauty approached me while I was working in the stable and said, “Okay, smarty-pants! If you are so smart, tell me is the summation of sin(1/n) divergent or convergent?”

“Of course I would not presume to know what such big words even mean. However, I can imagine you would solve it by comparison. That is comparing sin(1/n) to 1/n and that if you took the limit of sin(1/n)/(1/n) as n approaches infinity that the limit would be 1. Therefore for example, if the summation of 1/n is divergent, whatever that means, then the summation of sin(1/n) is also divergent.”

“Oh, I see. Thanks.”

The next Thursday morning before leaving for classes, Patricia found me and asked, “I have a calculus exam Monday so are you going to help me study for it and cut out the imagine crap. I don’t know how but I know damn well you know calculus.”

“Auburn hair beauty, for the ecstasy of being able to gaze upon your loveliness and helping you study for an exam, I would walk barefoot through snow—crawl through briers and rattlesnakes,” I replied.

“Silly, I’m not asking you to do that and it’s not a date, you are just helping me study,” she admonished.

“Let me borrow your calculus book today and show me what sections the exam covers and we can study all day Saturday, let’s say 9:00 am, until whenever, if it is okay with your father.”

“That will be okay, but Saturday night I’ve got a date.”

“Saturday morning and afternoon should be adequate, and if not, I can come over early Sunday afternoon,” I replied.

Saturday morning at 9:00 am., I arrived and we settled at the kitchen table. “Patricia,” I said. “I made a list of integration and series problems and numbered them 1 through 40. There are many others but, at this level, they shouldn’t be on the exam. I have also made 240 flashcards, each with one of the types of problems. Working calculus is mostly recognizing which type the problem is. That is the difficult part. Usually, when you select the right approach, the solution is simple. Once I know you can recognize the problem and select the appropriate number for the type then we will work several problems of each type to make sure you can solve them.

“At first recognition may seem difficult. But then it is like a light turns on and it’s easy. I will be showing you certain little tricks to help you recognize the type and to simplify solving the problems. When you don’t select the correct number, I will tell you the correct number and show you why.”

Over an hour and 200 flashcards later Patricia said, “This is so hard, I’ll never get it.”

“Patricia, in the first 100 you guessed correctly 26. You got 41 correct out of the next 100. That is almost a 60 percent improvement so don’t give up. You are learning. However, I think we could take a breather and give your brain a rest.” By 4:00 pm. Patricia had an 85% recognition rate and could work most of the different types of problems. However, she was exhausted and felt like her brain was fried so we agreed to call it a day and I would return Sunday at 2:00 pm.

Sunday, I reinforced her memory with the flashcards and had Patricia to work a couple of problems of each type. When I left, I felt she basically knew the material for her calculus exam. While I was there Patricia told me her two-year-old laptop had quit working. I talked her into letting me keep it for a couple of days to see if I could fix it. I found that it would not boot because some of the system files were missing or corrupted. I reinstalled the Windows 10 operating system.

One of her folders was named “Photos” and the files were password protected. I was curious and was able to get the password “SUMMER1.” There were several photos of her in scanty lingerie. Also, a nude of her setting on her bed and propped up by her arms behind her. The bed was made up and I could see the color and design of her bedspread. I could also see her flowery wallpaper in the background. Her legs were straight and slighted parted. Her hair was pulled forward mostly hiding her face. I just couldn’t resist. I would do an oil painting of her nude setting in a field of flowers, matching her wallpaper with her setting on a blanket that would look just like her bedspread. I would title it “One Summer Day;” a take-off of her password. Instead of all hair covering all of her face, I would have one strand of hair down one side of her face. Of course, the nude would leave no doubt even to the shape of her navel and the location of a tiny mole.

I returned her laptop on Tuesday morning and asked if I could take some photos to use to paint an oil painting of you. “You paint too?” she questioned and gave me another of her funny looks.