Chapter 3

I could go into great detail describing the next fifteen years but most of it would resemble, “June 3rd – I woke up and scratched my backside like I usually did. Most times I farted on the way to take a piss but didn’t need to that morning.” Nobody enjoys reading that, so I’ll spare you. Here are the parts you might actually want to know.

Nora gave birth to our daughter Renee in 1951, then Mark in ‘52, John in ‘54, and Sally in ‘55. They could rightfully be called bastards, since their mother and I were married to other people. Jake knew I was their father but loved and cared for them like they were his own. I loved them too but kept my distance to protect our secret. Though she didn’t want any more children, Nora and I kept up our affair. We’d meet in the woods, the hay loft of their barn, or the ice shack during the winter. We had some sexy fun a couple times a week, and I added cugi ... cuntla ... whatever it is when a man kisses a girl between her legs, to our more than pleasant meetings. To celebrate each pregnancy and each birth the beautiful redhead would even let me up her rump! Once she told me Jake liked hearing about what we did. It got him excited, which I didn’t understand and still don’t. The last thing I’d want is details about my spouse cheating on me.

I helped Jake re-wire his house in the spring of ‘58. A guy from the power company came out and shut the electricity off at the pole by the road, so we could disconnect the old wires and hook the new ones up to the transformer on a pole next to his garage. It was easy to stand on the garage roof and reach the pole and wires, which was convenient then and terrible later. My wife Elaine and I had supper with their family that night. We complimented them on having twice as many lights and an outlet in each room like we did.

The next morning Nora saw our nearly 4-year-old son John had climbed the ladder and was walking around on the garage roof! She called to him and tried to coax him down, but he was proud he was able to get up there. He clapped a lot and raised his hands over his head, touching the power line that instantly electrocuted him. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was restraining my feelings at his funeral. To keep our long-term affair secret, I needed to seem only mildly sad my boy had died. It’s hard for me to admit this, but the next afternoon I walked into the woods alone and bawled my eyes out.

My stepsons Lawrence and William married ladies they had met years before in school and moved away with them. Their brother Thomas loved God instead of girls and went to a college for ministers. I forget the name of it. He preached in a small town an hour away for a few years and returned when our minister decided to retire at ‘only 82 years young’. Thomas never married and was kind enough to let another man share the parsonage with him for several decades. He even gave him a job mowing the grass, cleaning the church, and so on. Now that I think of it, I guess they might have been gay. Back then it would have been a terrible disgrace and they even could have gone to jail, but now I see that people need to find happiness and companionship where they can.

My wife Elaine’s youngest boy Stanley wanted to marry his lady friend Carol, but neither of them had much money. We spoke to her parents and they agreed to split the cost of a trailer house and a small wedding with me. We bought the kids a two-bedroom ‘Tri-Level’ mobile home. It technically had three floors, which was sort of a sales gimmick. The upper floor was a 5-foot-tall child’s bedroom covering the rear third of the trailer’s length. The 6-foot-tall room below it was a living room. They parked the trailer ten yards from our house and I hooked up the water and electric for it. Stanley and his family stayed and helped out on the dairy farm a lot. Luckily their first two children were a pair of boys, so they could share the little bedroom. Their third was a girl, who slept in the living room until she started school. Eventually they moved into our house and took over the dairy farm, but I’ll get to that later.

I was cutting some dead trees for firewood in the late autumn of ‘61. It was a cold and very windy day. One didn’t fall the way I expected and surprised me. I tripped and it crushed my lower legs, trapping me. My chainsaw dropped to the ground just out of reach. I could have grabbed it easily if only my arm was three inches longer. I thought about what I should do as I laid there on the ice of a frozen puddle, stuck under the heavy tree trunk. I was a quarter mile from home and knew everybody would be inside because of the cold. It was unlikely anybody would hear me but I shouted for help many times. Since nobody shouted back, I knew I was the only one who might get me out. I kept trying to reach the chainsaw but it taunted me, just sitting there a finger-length out of reach!

I saw a wolf walk out of the woods and look at me across 200 yards of snow-covered field. A little while later, two other wolves appeared out of the forest. I yelled at them several times as they slowly approached but they kept coming. They might have been fifty yards away when another, larger wolf walked out of the clump of trees I had just been cutting. It was only ten steps away! I screamed with all my might, but the beast wasn’t afraid. It growled and kept walking toward me! From only spitting distance, the wolf sniffed the air and stared into my eyes.

Suddenly he turned toward the others and howled, then he ran to them and led them away. I noticed he was limping slightly and didn’t put much weight on his front right paw. I finally realized he was the wolf Pine and I rescue from the trap, all those years ago! I had helped saved him, so he saved me. I smiled and decided we were nearly square, since he still owed me a couple of mink.

Like most men at the time, all my pals and I smoked. I had a craving and dug in my pockets but couldn’t find my cigarettes. I turned my head and saw they had fallen out of reach too. What I did find was a screwdriver. I stretched my arm out and pushed the saw handle back and forth with the screwdriver, and it slid down the slight hill toward me! Starting a chainsaw while laying on your back is even harder and more dangerous than it might sound. I thanked God and sighed in relief once I’d cut the log and freed myself. My lower legs hurt like crazy! Even flexing a toe was agony! I tried to stand and nearly blacked out from the pain. I crawled about twenty yards to my truck, then climbed inside and called for help on my CB radio.