ANN'S ADULT CHILDREN MOVE HOME

Today we continue to look at life on the mountain. Daddy and Charley pass away, and Ann finds love.

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 30...HELL                                                                  

At one time or another, most of the children came to live on the mountain with us while they were having trouble keeping their own homes together. We were just grateful that we had a place for them to live. Everyone worked hard when they came to the mountains and so it would not take the children long to get on their feet and find new apartments and new lives back down in the city.

Debby never came up to the mountains, with the exception of a few short visits; she always managed to stay in one place for years at a time. Becky and Skeeta spent several months with us but would usually end up going back to New Jersey to live with Skeeta's parents. Charlie spent one long stretch with us when he was a young man, but he soon moved back to Iowa where he met Lynette and had two children, and he has stayed there ever since he went back. David returned back home to the mountain for his last two years of high school and then after graduation he found a place to live in downtown San Diego. In 1995, David moved to New Jersey shortly after Becky had returned there. Jared joined the Navy Sea Bees after graduating from high school and never returned to the mountain to live. Belinda and Jim and at times, Alana and Helena, lived in the mountains with us for extended periods of time. Kelly and Thomas never lived on the mountain. Janice never returned to the mountain after she left, and didn't finish high school. She met Carl and had Justin and Sara, and they made a good life for themselves. Brian lived with us most of the time on and off, all the years we lived on the mountain. He graduated high school in 1993.

In my personal life I was a wreck. My weight crept up to 335 pounds, and I had to have a total hysterectomy, and a gall bladder removal. Then in 1996 I was diagnosed with Diabetes II. I put myself on a very strict diet and the weight began to come off. I walked all about in the mountains for exercise and I did the hardest work I could find. I helped Bruce dig at the mine and shoveled rock, and I did the laundry in a big wash tub with a scrub board. In the winter time my hands froze while I washed and rinsed the clothes, and in the summer time the sun beat down unmercifully. There was no job that I hated more. As time passed, it became harder and harder to keep up with all the hard work at the mine. We had so many children, and at any one time at least two or three of the children would be having serious troubles with life. We worried about the safety of some of the grandchildren as their parents were involved in drugs and rough life styles. There is little parents/grandparents can do when things are messed up like that except to help out as best we could and try to encourage change in the grown-up children. Of course we might as well have talked into the wind until our children got into their thirties and started listening to other people again. Most of the children regained their feet and went on to better lives, and the grandchildren went through mini-hells, some of them, but they have all managed to come out stronger and better people.

But Brian was no longer a child and, despite the fact that I did not want him to, he kept ending up back at the mountains. I wasn't allowed to go to see my daughters and the grandchildren, but according to Bruce I had to wait on Brian myself, hand and foot, everyday. I began to hate Bruce and began to thrash around to find a way to get off of the mountain and away from him. But my physical shape was such that I could not walk off of the mountain, and I had nowhere to go if I could walk off. I felt frustrated and bitter.

In September of 1991, within two weeks of each other, my daddy and my brother, Charley passed away. Daddy went with a smile on his face. He had been talking to his brothers, who had passed before him, the last few days of his life and he went to sleep one night and didn't wake up. Charley had a tragic ending. He had returned to his friends in the desert around Palm Springs and had got caught up in the drug trade. One evening he got into a fight with someone about drugs and the man had a gun. Charley climbed up a telephone pole to get away from the man, but the man fired the gun and the bullet hit Charley in the chest.

The police were very kind to Debby and me as we were distraught and could not believe that Charley was gone. We had Charley's remains cremated and we took them up to his beloved mountains and sprinkled his ashes over one of the claims that Charley had particularly loved. Now I had only mother left of my original family and she was very happy being a little girl again.

One day in 1998 Bob, who was still one of our partners, gave me one look of tender compassion for the plight I was in and I fell in crush with him. I cannot say exactly what it was, but one day that good, patient man took pity on my plight and my heart was softened toward him. It wasn't that he offered me any hope of salvation from the mountains, but that he just listened to me when I cried.  He cared what I felt and he began to bring me sweet, endearing gifts: little dolls and books; the Farmer's Almanac; and cookbooks. I began to think that I was actually worth something again,and I began to get my health back. We began an affair that lasted the last two years that I lived on the mountain. There was nothing flashy that went on, just simple walks down the winding roads and his arms once we were far enough away.


Tomorrow Ann ends her relationship with Bob, is given the wrong medicine by her pharmacy, which nearly killed her, is hospitalized and meets Ed...

ANN, DEEPLY DEPRESSED, ATTEMPTS SUICIDE

Today Ann goes through a time of deep depression and attempts suicide...

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 29...HELL                                                          

I have been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital so many times that I cannot remember the number of times. Also, the ECT caused some short-term memory loss which is why I couldn't exactly remember. I remember getting excellent treatment and much information about my disorders. I learned coping skills and I learned to accept myself as a good person who had a disorder that had to be treated in order for me to maintain a decent lifestyle. I am by nature a positive person so no matter how sick I became I was able, with the grace of ONE, to start over again determined to get well.

There were suicide attempts I am saddened to say. Most of the time when I would get really ill, I would take a fork or knife and stab myself to punish myself for being such a bad person. Somebody had to punish me when I got out of line, and when I was stabbing myself I felt better inside, like I had paid the price for my many sins; those times were not really suicide attempts, but rather attempts to make myself feel better inside. One time was very serious though and I shudder even as I write this as I remember how desperate I was and how close I came to death.

I had my own gun, a .22 Colt revolver with snake-load bullets. The bullets had b.b.s in them so that if I shot a snake I would be sure to hit him. I took my gun into my bedroom; it was loaded with regular .22 shells. I locked my door and was standing by my bed with the gun pressed against my right temple, and I had my finger on the trigger; it had a light pull. I pulled back the hammer and just as I was pressing the trigger, Bruce burst through the door, sailed over the bed and knocked the gun out of my hand. Then he slapped me across the face and stopped me from hurting myself. It was the only time he laid a hand on me and I am glad he did so then. I went into the hospital for about a month after that. When I came out there were still all the loaded guns around the house but I never touched a gun again; just looking at them made me sick.

Even though I was very ill at times, I was also going through a very creative period. I wrote a non-fiction book that I called, COLOR PROUD: Succeeding in an Interracial Family. I tried for a year to get it published, but I only received rejection notices. However, one part of the book called, "Hello Brother," was published in AIM Magazine. One of the stories, "COLOR: A Fable for our Time," is still used in the Holy Child Jesus school's cross cultural classes thanks to Sister Thea Bowman who believed in me but has since passed away, much too early.

Being Bi-Polar has many advantages as well as detriments. There is this creative side where I can draw and paint, and also write; and write I do. It seems like I never stop writing, it is almost a compulsion, but writing keeps me sane. Other things that keep me sane are my children and grandchildren.

This will sound very strange to you I am sure, but I would not give up my mental illness for anything. It has brought me much knowledge about myself, and it has given me hidden strengths. I will always be medicated for my illness, but I am on a minimum of medication now. The creativity that comes as a blessing with Bi-Polar disorder I would not trade for any other gift on Earth, so I take my meds and practice releasing, and I feel filled with joy; most of the time. Every once in a while the disorder creeps up on me and I feel depressed and need to have a medication re-adjustment. Bi-Polar disorder is a bio-chemical imbalance in the brain and the chemicals are always in flux, so I must always keep my inner eye peeled for sudden changes that can occur, but I do feel blessed with good doctors and good medications. It is certainly not the end of my world.

In my later years, I was re-diagnosed and found not to be schizo-affective, but instead to have Bi-Polar disorder, rapid cycling, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from challenges in my childhood.

Meanwhile, I began to have grave reservations about staying on the mountain with Bruce.


Tomorrow Ann faces much hardship at the mine and begins a love affair with a close friend.

ANN FACES HER MENTAL ILLNESS

Today we begin a two-day look at Ann as she faces, endures, and triumphs over a life-long mental illness. She triumphs because she refuses to stop growing up.

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 29...HELL                                               

Mental illness has been the single most difficult struggle I have had in my life. I discovered that I had a mental illness when I was a newly married 18-year-old. Mother had insisted that if I marry Charles that I go to Navy Hospital and be evaluated for a neurological disorder that she seemed determined to prove that I had. It was the only way that she could explain why I was so moody during my teen years. She felt that I had "neurolepsy"; so I did go to Navy Hospital and had an EEG done and several other tests. When I went back to the hospital some months later to see an eye doctor, I went and got my chart from the chart room to take to my doctor. I was very curious, and opened the chart to see the results of my testing. When I read the first page, I saw that they had diagnosed me as having ambulatory paranoid schizophrenia. I quietly walked back out of the doctor's office and took the chart and went home. I still have that chart. I was stunned. Of course I was only 18 and did not understand all of the ramifications of the diagnosis, but I knew enough that I did not want anyone else to know I had the terrible affliction. One of the tests I had taken asked specific questions about my childhood and I had answered truthfully. The doctor's refused to believe that what I had said had happened, had really happened. They had recommended that I receive treatment at an outpatient county psychiatric unit, but Charles would not let his wife go to any such place, so I did not get any help at that time.

After I had given birth to Jared in 1975, I had post-partum depression but did not know that it had a name at the time. I was very depressed and spent a lot of time with Jared lying on the couch in the living room just watching TV, eating chocolate, and crying. Jared was a lovely baby, very good natured, and if he hadn't been, I think I would have been hospitalized then, but at the time I didn't even know anything about psychiatric hospitals. My Bishop sent me to see Dr. LaMar in 1976 because he felt that talking my problems over with him might help me to stabilize. Dr. LaMar was a wonderful psychiatrist and he actually believed me when I told him my stories about my youth. He got me stabilized on Amitriptyline and I pulled out of the depression and went on with my normal life.

Then, as I told you, I had the nervous breakdown in 1977 and went to the psychiatric hospital. There again, the doctors would not believe me when I told them some of the things that my mother had done to my brother, especially about when she had cut his penis when he was three. They suggested that I sit down with my father and ask him if such an event really did occur. Daddy was living with me at the time-it was one of the times when he had run away from my mother himself-and so when they gave me leave from the hospital I asked him point blank if I had been imagining things about the past. Daddy started to cry, and told me everything that I remembered was true, and that it was the greatest pain in his life that he had not done anything to protect Charley and me. I told daddy that Charley and I both loved him and didn't blame him, and that we understood what he had also been going through. Daddy, I really understand, as I sit here at 64 I go back into the past and see the many errors that I did with my own children. I just shudder at the many mistakes that I have made; I am also so sorry for the things I did, and the things that I neglected to do. Thank ONE that my children still love me anyway.

I managed to skate through college and my wonderful job at Starnet without totally breaking down, and I managed to get us settled in the mountains. The first years in the mountains there was so much work to do that I didn't even have time to think. Eleven grandchildren were born into our family during the 14 years that we lived on the mountain. Debby had Sheera three years after having James. Becky had Sierra in 1993 and Warren in 1995. Charlie had Lindsey and Mark. Belinda had Helena. Kelly had Jesse, Jason, and Matthew; and Janice had Justin and Sara. Such rich years they were as children are the greatest gift that I can imagine. I also realized that ONE had given me the blessing I had asked him for, a house on five acres of land. A millsite is five acres. ONE does answer prayer.

How the grandchildren loved the mountains. They had total freedom to run around and make noise, and Bruce taught all of the grandchildren how to handle and take care of a gun. In the afternoons, after the work was done, he would teach them how to fire a gun and they all became marksmen. He would also have them work in the mine with him so they all became little gold miners. He taught as many as were old enough how to weld, and how to handle tools. The children loved their grandfather Bruce, and Bruce loved all of the grandchildren without any favorites; they were all great to him and I really appreciated this quality in him.

The first summer that we were in the mountains, both David and Jared went to Iowa for a month to visit their dad. Three weeks into their visit, I received a letter from David that said that he was not going to come back to San Diego, but was going to live with his father in Iowa. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I felt rejected and that catalyzed my second stay in a mental hospital. I was profoundly depressed and could not function at all. I lay down on a bed in the hospital and did not move, or eat, or talk. Dr. LaMar had turned me over to Becky's doctor, Dr. Laurence, because he did not do hospitalizations. Dr. Laurence thought that I was going to just give up and die. He prescribed ECT, electro convulsant therapy; shock therapy. I have no idea how many times I received ECT-many, many times-but finally it started to bring me out of the worst of the depression. Finally I got up on my feet and improved. Dr. Laurence diagnosed me as having schizo-affective disorder/Bi-Polar disorder. I was declared totally disabled and was put on state disability for a year, and then I started receiving Social Security Disability and eventually Medicare.


Tomorrow Ann, pressed beyond endurance, attempts suicide.
 

ANN FACES A MOTHER MOUNTAIN LION

Thank you all for returning to this blog, I really appreciate your support. Today we study life on a gold mining claim; talk about Bruce' killing his father-in-law; Ann faces down a mother Mountain Lion; and a Bobcat is loose in the kitchen...

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 28...HELL         

Some people hated Bruce because he got away with so much, but he did have a lot of friends in the proper places and sometime I wondered how he got away with so much. Bruce had killed (shot with a gun) his first father-in-law many decades before; it had been in self-defense. His father-in-law snuck up on him and fired a gun at him, but Bruce was such a fast-draw that he got a shot off first. He was forced to fire a gun in court (dry fire with a machine that timed him) to see if he was really such a quick draw. He was, and the charges were dropped against him. That is all very well and good, but I have to admit that I was afraid of what Bruce was capable of. One thing I didn't need anyone to tell me, was that he was emotionally abusive and controlling. When I worked at Starnet and went to college, I had not seen too much of the violent, irrational Bruce. I had my own transportation then and did things pretty much as I wanted to do them, but shortly after we moved to the mountains I gave up my little car to Debby because it couldn't stand up to the roughness of the roads up to the mine. Bruce would not let me go off of the mountain alone. He refused to let me go to see my children and grandchildren, although we went to visit his family often. He refused to let me go to Julian by myself, even refusing to let me go to the library or the grocery store alone. When we did go anywhere in the truck, he refused to let me get out of the truck and socialize. He kept me waiting in the truck for hours at a time while he visited with his friends. Peaches became my confidant and I love her so much for listening to me while I hurried to get the few items of groceries that we needed.

Living in the mountains was a great adventure. It was so beautiful all around us, and there was such peace and stillness, only broken by the shriek of a hawk or the sound of the stream rushing over the boulders of its creek bed. Jared and I ran a weather station for the BLM to keep track of the temperatures, rainfall, snowfall, and the wind speed. The animals in the canyon were not wary of our presence as they had seen few human beings over the years and so were not afraid of us. Bats and huge moths would get in the cabin at night because the lights in our house attracted them. Really, I should say that the huge (and little) moths would coat the outside of the house at night because we had the only light in the canyon, and the bats would come to the house to catch the moths and sometimes accidentally get trapped in the house. They would scare the heck out of me as they flew so desperately around the cabin, but Bruce would finally catch them in a coat of his and then let them loose outside.

One early morning I got up to go to the outhouse. When I got outside I found myself face to face with a mother mountain lion. She was beautiful and I just stood there and didn't move and stared into her eyes with love and calmness. She looked into my eyes for several moments, and then she turned around and quietly stalked away. The strength for that came from ONE, if I would have had to think by myself at the moment I would probably have screamed and that could have been fatal. Another time, Bruce had left the back door open at night (he insisted on this every night) so that his kittens and cats-there were 13, all inbred-could go out or come in as they so desired. We heard a loud banging in the kitchen and we got up with our flashlights to see what was going on. As we approached the kitchen, a large bobcat ran right past us and out the back door; he had been eating the cat's food. Once we were sitting in our living room and we opened the front door for some air and then we heard all of this banging in the covered barbecue. Bruce took a stick and opened up the lid of the barbecue and out flew a huge raccoon that must have gotten trapped in the barbecue when the lid was closed down the night before. Many times we were sprayed by the skunks as they got really close to the house looking for food, and once there was a huge rattlesnake that got trapped under the floor of the living room. The rattlesnake started rattling and it took us a while to realize that it was a snake making all that noise, it sounded more like the sound of propane escaping from a leaking tank. After washing all the valves of the propane tanks with soap-water and not finding any leaks, Bruce got down on his hands and knees and a flashlight and saw the big rattler under the living room floor. Of course, Bruce got out a rifle and shot the snake on his first try. Then he dragged it out from under the floorboards with a large plank, cut off its head and threw that away, then turned the snake upside down and put rocks on it, hoping that would bring on a thunderstorm. I wasn't too happy that he chose to leave the snake right where I would have to pass it every time I went to the outhouse.

As wonderful as the mountains themselves were to live in, I began to lose my sanity in a very real way; bit by bit, day by day. If I may tell you of these times I would sure appreciate it. Maybe my tale will help to make you stronger one day and that would be a blessing to me.


Tomorrow we take a look at the story of Ann's mental illness...

HARD ROCK MINING, 32 WEAPONS; A HARD LIFE

Today Bruce finds a vein of gold, he accumulates 32 weapons-all loaded-and shoots his own self. He becomes a cowboy legend in the back country of San Diego County, the last person to wear 6-shooters on his hips at ALL times.

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 28...HELL
                                                                                                      
Bruce mined the Golden Oaks East mining claim. We had found a vein that assayed out to be a quarter ounce of gold per ton of rock and it was here that Bruce began to dig. The first day that he began to make a cut in the canyon wall, Bruce felt someone standing behind him. Turning around, he saw no one around, but he knew that he was in the presence of one of the Indian leaders. He said out loud that he would always treat the canyon with respect and always acknowledge the presence of the spirits of the tribe. He felt warmth and joy surround him and he knew that we would be protected as long as we protected the canyon.

Bruce was doing hard-rock mining. Hard-rock mining meant that he swung a pick at the canyon wall and chipped off rock bit by bit. It was incredibly hard work. After chipping out a pile of rock he would shovel the rock into a wheelbarrow and wheel the rock to be dumped on top of a dump that had to be situated in a barren area of the canyon, where it would not disturb the flora or the fauna, nor be conspicuous to other citizens enjoying the canyon.

On most Saturdays and Sundays, people would come up to the mountains to see Bruce work his mine. He was always happy to show off his tunnel because, just like in the story of Tom Sawyer and the white-washed fence, once people saw how much fun Bruce was having mining, they all asked him if they could help him. We would not have been able to be as successful as we were without the help of those dear people.

Living in the mountains required work every minute of every day just to survive in the elements. We worked from sunup to sundown in hard labor, and then in the evenings there was cooking and cleaning; and the children had to do their school work.

Bruce had 32 weapons of all kinds; all of the guns were kept loaded. Most of the rifles and handguns were kept in a wooden safe that Bruce built himself and that was kept locked, but there were at least six to ten guns that were out in the open or on Bruce's hips. Bruce felt, what was the use of having a gun if it was not loaded? Bruce also had massive amounts of gunpowder in one of the back rooms and he loaded his own bullets. He also made his own dynamite explosives for shooting the walls of the mine when the rock got too hard to move any other way. Bruce was the only one to get hurt by the guns in all the times we were in the mountains. He was taking a gun out of his holster one day, to clean it, when he dropped the gun and the gun went off shooting a hole in his left leg. We had to rush him to a hospital to have his bullet removed. It hurt him a great deal and he was always a lot more cautious with his guns from that day on.

Bruce had a reputation in Julian and the surrounding area. He would never take off his gun no matter where he went on the mountains, or in Julian. He was the last of the gun-toting cowboys in San Diego County. He would wear his Levi's and engineer boots, a cowboy-type shirt and bandana, a black felt cowboy hat, and a black trench coat that fell to the ground. He wore his belt and holster with one gun, and then he had at least one other gun hidden on his person. He never drew his gun unless he intended to use it, but there were many times that he had to use his gun. There were dozens of rattlesnakes that were shot by Bruce, who would then cut off their heads and throw the heads far away into the brush. Then he would turn the rattlesnake upside down and place rocks on top of it to weigh it down. He said that it was an old Indian method to insure that we would start to have rain soon; it seemed to work, sporadically.

Bruce and his guns and his mining were great stories that went around the Julian area. It was one reason that so many people came up to the mine to see what was going on, and to help. All of the guns frightened me and made me feel uncomfortable. I hated it when strangers came up on the mountain to try to stake claims over our claims. It happened a lot, and almost everyone who came up to claim-jump the mine also had guns. There would be the confrontations of Bruce and the other men and there were many times when things came to a show of guns. Fortunately only a few times did the confrontations come to the pulling out and shooting of the guns, but one group of claim-jumpers started firing their weapons at the back of the truck where there were several children sitting, watching the goings on. Bruce got in the truck in that instant and drove off the mountain to get the Sheriff. The Sheriff came up and threw the claim-jumpers off of the mountain, but that was one of the scariest moments we had. Once Bruce chased off the mountain a group of men who were shooting their guns across the road and not paying any attention to the trucks that drove down the road-the bullets whizzed over our heads. Bruce started firing back until the men begged for mercy; he then followed their trucks off the mountain raining bullets across the top of their trucks. I was so worried that someone would get hit. The men went to the Sheriff's office to complain, but the Sheriff told them not to go back up on the mountain as they had no business shooting their guns off when there were other people around.


Tomorrow Ann comes face to face with a mother Mountain Lion, and a Bobcat invades our kitchen...

LIFE ON A GOLD MINING CLAIM

Today Ann steps back in time to 1936, as she works and lives on a gold mining claim in Chariot Canyon, Julian, California.

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 28...HELL

Big Skeeta had dug us an outhouse that was seven feet deep on the side of a hill in back of the cabin. It was a fancy two-seater and had a door that we propped open so that as you sat on the throne you could watch the animals go by; we saw deer, raccoon, opossum, skunks, and snakes go blissfully by unaware that we were sitting there watching them. We kept magazines and lime in the outhouse; the lime we sprinkled over the contents of the outhouse to help the matter break down.

We could afford electricity only four hours at night. Our electricity was generated by an old 1936 Kohler generator that ran on gasoline. Once a month we would put three 55-gallon drums on the back of the truck and head to town to fill them up with gas, and that is all the gasoline we needed to run the mine and the cabin. Four hours of light a night allowed the children to do their homework and occasionally we would watch a VCR tape on our TV. Of course we got no TV reception in the canyon so the TV was useful only for watching movies. It was an age before cell phones could get reception in the deep canyon we were in and Bruce's CB radio also was useless in the canyon, so we had no way to communicate out of the canyon in case of an emergency. Therefore, we started every day in prayer that we would have no great emergencies while we lived in the canyon. We used kerosene lanterns and flashlights to see our way around when there was no electricity.

We used a propane stove and refrigerator that we had been able to buy, both dated in the early 1930's. These necessitated having two propane tanks that we had filled twice a year by a company in Ramona that delivered to Julian and the back country. For heat in the winter we used a very old tin stove that ran on wood. We had to buy three cords of wood a year from our friends Tony and Mike, both Indians from the Santa Ysabel Tribe, and they gave us very generous cords of wood and even delivered the wood to us; which was a feat in itself, because we lived so far up in the mountains. In the winter to get our beds warm before going to bed, we put big rocks in the oven of our stove and heated them up, then we wrapped the rocks in newspaper and put them between the covers of the bed; we really loved those rocks.

Let me explain how far back we were from civilization. Chariot Canyon began at the highway where it is Banner, California. There was a Banner Store and Campground at Banner, run by Peaches and her family who were the greatest friends you could have. They saved our lives many times over the 14 years we lived in Chariot Canyon. From there you would take a dirt road four miles up the canyon to our millsite. Now, usually the road was graded once a year by the Forestry Department, but that was not to be depended upon. The roads were graded to act as firebreaks, and as a means of getting fire-fighting equipment up the mountain in case the canyon should catch on fire. Often state budgets didn't allow for the grading of the road, and in that case the roads would wash out in many places in-between the gradings. Bruce built a leveler out of beams of wood and boulders that we would drag behind the truck to try to level out some of the deep ruts the road would get. The dirt road became the bed of a stream about a half of a mile from the millsite, so you had to have an old tough truck, or a four-by-four, to get over the rocks (boulders) in the stream.

Chariot Canyon was very beautiful and had once belonged to the Indians less than a century ago. There were areas where you could see the matatays, deep holes in granite rocks, made by the Indians as they ground the wild buckwheat and acorns that grew in the canyon. There were also wild grapes and berries in the canyon, and also several varieties of sage. We went to the top of the mountain that was at the head of the canyon and sent up prayers and offerings that ONE would keep us ever mindful of the ecology of the canyon. We also prayed that we would never do anything to disturb the Indian's sacred grounds, nor change the face of the canyon in any way. The BLM also had strict regulations that we had to follow to keep the canyon in its preserved state, and also that we had to follow OSHA laws and regulations for the safety of the miners and the mine itself.

We had to go into town to get groceries, gasoline, and food, and also to wash the clothes. We tried to stay on the mountain and not go to the city oftener than every two weeks, but we still had doctor's appointments in the city and emergencies to take care of with the other children in the city, so we seemed to go into the city every week. Bruce spent every day working the mine first, and then when we really had to, we would go to town; we put a lot of mileage on the truck.


Tomorrow we find gold but it is hard work and Bruce shoots himself.

WE MOVE UP TO THE GOLD MINE & CHALLENGES

Thank you very much for returning to this blog. Today Ann faces circumstances that force them to move up to the mountains and the gold mines.

THE GOD GAMES: Heaven & Hell...Chapter 28...HELL

1987 was the year of the big change; so many events occurred. Walter was born to Becky, and James was born to Debby, making my grandchildren number five.

At work there was a rumor that Starnet was being sold, by Ford Aerospace, to a company based in Oregon by the name of American Network. All of us were very unhappy, we had loved working for Ford Aerospace and there had been many perks such as good health and life insurance, stock in the company, and 401Ks. American Network offered a much smaller package with fewer perks, but they were the ones who bought our company. American Network offered all of the Traffic Engineers good jobs with good salary and moving expenses to move up to Oregon. All of the Traffic Engineers refused the offers; we did not want to move up to Oregon, and we did not feel that American Network was the best company we could work for. I also got an offer from a telecommunications company in St. Louis, but again I did not take that offer, as I did not want to take the children from their schools and move them across country into the unknown. Instead, I made as even more drastic move.

The idea of actually living at the millsite in Chariot Canyon came into my mind. I rationalized that once Starnet was closed in San Diego, we could no longer afford the rent where we were and rent at the millsite was only $300 a year. I spent many months searching for a good job, but the job market was depressed in San Diego at the time and I found nothing. So I began working with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) filing papers to be able to live at the millsite. I had to show what and where we were planning on digging tunnels on the mining claims and where we were planning any buildings or sheds on the millsite or mining claims. We had to show that our operation would not harm the environment or the historicity of the canyon, also, we would not bother the lives of the cattle that had first priority for grazing, in the canyon. We had to have any outhouse set at least 100 feet from the stream, and preferably have a self-contained outhouse set up instead.

Bruce began going from one construction job in the city to another, and asking them if he could haul off any scrap lumber that they threw away. He was very successful and he took load after load of used and slightly crooked wood up to the millsite. He was also given doors that weren't quite straight, beams that had been cut too short, and other materials that they could not use on their jobs. In short, over the course of a year, we were provided with all of the materials we would need to build a little house on the millsite, all that we had to buy were nails, plywood, tarpaper, tar, and screening material.

The children were not in favor of moving to Julian, although they loved the mountains, because it would entail a change of schools and they would miss their friends in Santee and El Cajon. However, we had no choice if we wanted to give the children any good standard of living. Debby, Becky, and Belinda were all living their own lives and had little babies to care for so they would not be coming. Charlie refused to go, and since he was 18, he stayed behind and lived with Jay's parents. Kelly was also 18 and she decided to live with her boyfriend, Thomas, instead of coming up. So we only had four children that would actually be living in the mountains with us.

I began to feel overstressed and I also felt very depressed even to thoughts of suicide. Both Dr. Laurence and Dr. LaMar told me that if I could not get things together, I might have to be hospitalized; they cautioned me against taking another job in the workforce at this time because they felt that if I didn't stop working I would have a total breakdown, but I could not let up in any area of my life. American Network sent all of the Traffic Engineers to Oregon to orient their Traffic Engineers on our former network, and how our cities interrelated with theirs. In the same time frame there was also: settling Charlie and Kelly in their new lives; packing and cleaning the house in Santee; finishing the core room of the house in the mountains; and building a porch around the core building. The porch we would divide into a living room, four bedrooms, and a workshop for Bruce. My job ended in May of 1987 and we moved to the mountains two days after school let out in June.

My severance package from American Network allowed us to buy the supplies we needed to stock the cabin and pay for the rest of the material to build the whole cabin. We put most of our belongings in a storage space we rented in Santee, but we kept the books, pictures, and tools out to take to the mountains.

Bruce and I slept on a pull-out couch and the children on their beds set up around the porch which now surrounded the cabin.

We had no running water so we put an empty 55-gallon drum on the top of the cabin roof with plumbing to connect it to the cabin sink that we had salvaged from a junkyard. Then we took two more 55-gallon drums and put them into out 1956 Chevy Truck-bed and drove to a neighboring stream and pumped water into the drums. We would then return home and pump the water from the drums on the truck into the drum on the roof and a drum on the ground for later. It was a lot of work and we very quickly learned the value of conserving the water supply. To get hot water, we would fill a huge pan with water and heat the water up to boiling on the stove, then use it to wash dishes, or wash your hair, or take a bath in the big galvanized tub we had bought at the hardware store.


Tomorrow we dig an outhouse and learn to live with two hours of electricity we generated each night.