Upside Down

The Days of Lamentation - Part One

[This is what I remember of the stories my Grandmother and Mother told about themselves.]

Prelude

The corpse was ashen, laying on the bed, eyes closed, lightly freckled pasty cheeks now drooping. The overhead light caused lines to shadow her thin pale lips. Her head was tilted a little to the side, but the black and grey waves of her full hair still fell to her shoulders. The bed coverings were pulled to her shoulders, the satin blue comforter arranged neatly. She was propped up on the pillows, but only her head was visible. Lady Joan, the beauty, lay in state.

In the large mirror covering the wall opposite the foot of the bed, the illusion of width in the room was sustained. The comforter hid the colostomy bag taped to her stomach and the bag of urine taped to the side rail of the bed. The IV machine was unplugged and silent. It was done. The machine was finished delivering the sleep of freedom from pain and the sleep that leads to death.

I stood in the doorway, leaning my head against the glossy aqua woodwork, looking at her one last time before they came and wheeled her out to the black van waiting in the narrow street outside. I, too, was done. I had fulfilled my vow, I had honored the mother I both hated and admired with such passion, and whom I strove so hard to please.

Chapter One - Stories Leona Told

Joan was a product of her time, the product of her upbringing. She was a selfish only child, born Jean Adair McDaniel, battered in her youth by bragging west-coast navy flyers who put up with her to be with her sweet mother, Lester Leona Sinnott of Pensacola, Florida (born July 28th, around 1902).

Leona was the fourteenth child of the County Commissioner of Roads (probably Escambia County, where Pensacola is located). Her mother (Margaret, of the Burkes originally from Canada) died soon after giving birth to her. Leona was swept off to a catholic orphanage to be taken care of until her sisters were old enough to handle the younger children. This was a common practice at the time. Leona was basically a 'baby boarder', a service the nuns provided for widowed fathers.

Once back home at around age six, Leona lead a rather free life. She climbed trees, jumped off roofs and ran around with friends a lot. She did not attend school much, just enough to read and write, and then back home to help her sisters a little around the house, often escaping to the freedom outdoors when she could. Her sisters, following the fad at the time, bound her breasts as they were developing, for that 'mannish' flat look. In later years she paid for it with breasts that were so long they rested on her knees when she sat. (For more information on this period of Leona's life, see Joan's aborted writing on the yellow legal tablets found with the letters she wrote to Leona in the late 1950s and early 1960s).

At 17, Leona met Fred and childishly, they married. Leona and Fred tried living with Fred's widowed mother in Pensacola. Fred's mother thought she had found the house slave she had always craved. She beat Leona into submission and trained her to take care of the house. Fred did not have the stomach to stand up to his mother, so he fled them both. Leona was pregnant. Mrs. McDaniel was fond of walking by and kicking Leona when she was kneeling washing the floor. Leona was miserable.

Chapter Two - Baby Jean

Leona had her baby in the McDaniel house in Pensacola, Florida (November 15, 1921), but decided very shortly after to escape. Mrs. McDaniel was not happy with a girl baby when she had dreams of raising another little Fred. Leona found a boarding house in New Orleans that would take women with babies. Leona had hopes of reuniting with Fred. There, Leona recovered from the birth and then acted as housemaid for the woman, May, who owned that house and several other boarding houses on the street. Leona learned to cook from the boarding house cooks in the French-Southern style of the time.

The baby Jean had four stepfathers in her life. Before her birth, her real father Fred was gone, back to living with his original girl friend in New Orleans once he found that his new wife was easily pregnant. Back to his shiny black, horse-driven taxi, and meager living. May helped Leona get a divorce from Fred when he refused to support Leona and baby Jean.

Both of these women delighted in dressing up the baby. She was a toy thing to her mother, and she was a sort of 'come-on' used by May. When a male visitor would see May all dressed up, walking down the stairs with the darling little baby, pretending to be her mother, the man would feel all sweet and paternal, and he would turn to May for affection. Pretty little Jeannie was then pushed aside, and off the man and May would waltz to hop and skip from one drinking establishment to another. This went on for the first four or five years of Jean's life (c. 1921 to 1926).

About 1926, Leona married the first of her navy officer flyers and went back to live with him in Pensacola with Jean. The navy transferred some of the flyers to San Diego to eventually work on the aircraft carrier landing project (late 20s or early 30s), and Leona and Jean came west, too. Leona's sister Alberta S. Phelphs was living in Los Angeles with three children of her own, two boys and a daughter Jean, too. There was no navy family housing for Leona and Jeannie in San Diego, so they came up to Los Angeles and lived with Alberta. This is when Jean lost her name and became Joan.

Joan was not wanted in Alberta's house. She was just another noisy girl child to feed and get off to school. Alberta's husband, Beauford, was a motorcycle traffic patrolman for the city of Los Angeles. He was a huge, intimidating bear of a braggart, typical of the times, the lord of all he surveyed.

But the bribery money he got for not writing up traffic tickets was always quietly salted away in the pillowcase in the laundry cupboard, ready for the rain that might come some day. And one day it did.

In the early 1960s, his youngest son walked away to the desert with the $40,000 in the pillowcase, spending it all on drugs. Needless to say, that put a strain on family relationships. The oldest son became a lawyer with many clients who were bar owners on the Sunset Strip (pimps and call girls, also). He accumulated a little money from this and had a nice house up in the hills overlooking the Strip.

As the 1920's rolled into the 1930's, Leona worked as a maid in a motel. She saved for a sewing machine. Once she had taught herself how to sew, she would ride the bus downtown to the large stores with their fancy showcase windows and look at the artfully clothed papier-mâché models. She would go home and try out the styles, making the patterns from memory. She ensured that Joan was well dressed, even when Leona was a little frumpy herself.

Alberta encouraged Leona to divorce her first flyer, who never seemed to show up or send support. And she did. It was easy. Pay a lawyer 50 dollars, serve the papers and have them signed. Then wait a year, go to court, get a final decree, and it was done. However, the divorced woman in the 1930s was a 'used' woman. She had little social status. All her status was given vicariously through her husband and his ability to bring in an income. Even in her sister's house, Leona was the main in-house servant. Second-class all the way, since she was only a motel maid.

Big John was a friend of her former husband, another navy flying officer. He came around and talked sweet to Leona. He would marry Leona, if she did not bring Joan along. Alberta agreed, if Big John would give her some money every month to give to Alberta to take care of Joan. And so this marriage started out well for Leona. It seems Leona let her older sister Alberta make a lot of decisions for her! As every one remembers, Great aunt Alberta was a VERY BOSSY lady, with henna-dyed red hair.

Leona did not know that Big John was a surly drunkard. She quickly got pregnant and Big John was not happy about it. He thought if he knocked Leona around a bit, he could shake things loose. One Friday night, bathtub gin filling his gut, he decided to wipe the floor with Leona. She lay in a heap on the kitchen floor all night. The next morning, he had her pack a basket lunch of southern fried chicken and biscuits and off he dragged her to a fishing lake picnic with his buddies. She was bleeding badly as she miscarried, but tried to staunch it as best she could. She passed out in the little fishing boat on the lake and her bleeding embarrassed Big John in front of his friends. They forced him to take her to the hospital where it was confirmed that little Catherine was dead on arrival. No more babies for Leona, she was broken inside.

Leona yearned for Joan. And she talked Big John in to letting Joan come to live with them when Big John was transferred to Seattle. Joan was about 11 or 12 now. Leona easily found work, even in the depression. Big John liked to watch Joan try on the dresses Leona sewed for her. He liked it so much that when Leona had to work a Saturday shift at the motel, Big John decided to knock Joan around for some fun. He like to do this a lot. One time he got her down to her slip and was lunging at her when Leona walked in. Back Joan was shipped to Aunt Alberta's in Los Angeles. Joan never undressed in front of a man again, even her own husband. After awhile, Big John was embarrassed to have been caught and walked out on Leona. Leona moved back to Los Angeles to Alberta's and divorced him.

Leona tried living on her own, buying a house on Figeroa Street, and Joan continued to stay with Alberta, going to high school and visiting her mother on the weekends. Leona did not go out much, but mostly sewed and listened to the radio for entertainment. The people Leona knew were navy people. The people that Joan knew were navy people. Leona was popular because she could cook well in the southern style. She fed the lot of them when they showed up on her doorstep hungry and thirsty wanting to play cards. She always had chicken and beer in the icebox. Joan was popular because she was well-dressed and pretty.

Chapter Three - Young Joan

One day in Joan's senior year in high school (c. 1939) she met Stanley Leroy Newton in Oceanside, CA on a little day trip with her gang of navy friends. He was a flyer, too. But he was a civilian, a rich farmer's son. He hung around with the navy guys because of their shared interest in planes. Stan liked to build airplanes to entertain and show off to his friends.

(insert scanned photo portrait of Stan--looking like a young Howard Hughes.)

Stan was stunned by Joan. He chased after her. He found out where she lived. He called her. He drove out to her house. Aunt Alberta encouraged him. She was sick of having Joan around. Joan had male friends and her little mousey daughter, Jean didn't. It was that simple.

She wanted Joan out. Alberta saw the road out for Joan through Stan. She helped Stan talk Joan into marrying him in a little civil ceremony and then they packed Joan up and he drove her to his father's in-town house in Hanford, California. Joan did not quite finish high school, there was something not quite right about her transferred units between the Los Angeles and Seattle schools and she did not bother then to clean it up. Starry-eyed, she was a married woman now.

Stan's father Jesse was stunned by Joan, too. She was smart, but she was moody. Jesse did what he could to cheer up Joan, but Julia, his wife, was bitter. She did not think Joan, the navy brat, the daughter of a divorced woman, the daughter of a hotel maid, was fit enough for her only child, the Prince Stanley. She picked at Joan's lack of housekeeping and cooking skills. Joan had not learned these things from her mother or her Aunt. The bitterness between Joan and Julia was intense.

Finally, Jesse had his ranch foreman's family move out of the ranch house in Stratford. Joan and Stan moved in. Jesse was in the office in the ranch house all day long and he encouraged Stan to stay on the ranch, too, building his airplanes in the large sheet metal workshop he built near the ranch air strip. Jesse doted on Joan, and she loved it. Jesse could control Stan, and Julia was out of the way back in the town house all day.

There was a male bonding tradition in the Stratford farming community in those days. The local farmer-owners would all go into the little town of Stratford every weekday morning for breakfast at Gilardi's Tavern and Grill and pick up their bulky mail from their boxes in the Post Office across the street. Even though these folks were called ‘ranchers’, they were farmers who grew alfalfa, cotton, barley, rye, and other grains. Very few ran livestock that needed tending in the mornings. Officially, they owned family-owned incorporated farms, but they called their places ranches, from the Spanish tradition for land holdings in California.

They were a competitive lot of men. Bragging on their accomplishments, the size of their holdings, how much grain they harvested, how big and smart their boy children were (the inheritors). They came together each morning for breakfast as a sort of loose co-op to work together to keep the migrant "Oakies" out, keep the cotton-picking "niggers" in, and build the biggest profit they could from the land and water. (See the documentary movie "Cadilac Desert" for more information about the Tulare Water District and the state, regional and federal political pull these guys had. Jesse was a ring leader.)

Stan and Jesse were a part of the co-op thing. Jesse was respected and a leader, Stan was respected for his ability with aircraft, but not much as a farmer. The other men teased him. He did not take it well. Stan always hoped to break out of farm life, but Jesse would not let him go to college unless he studied agriculture. Stan was stubborn and would not do it.

Finally, he talked his father into letting him take Joan with him down to Hemit, in the southern California desert, to go to the school run by the Ryan Aeronautical Company to get his A&E license (aeronautical engineering) so that the experimental aircraft he build would be certified easily. Probably Joan had some sway with Jesse in this decision, too.

Julia, a community matron, ensured that Joan was not much respected by the other women and Joan did not develop many friends in Stratford besides the Gilardi's. Joan was lonely. At lot of her self-esteem was based on basking in male admiration. There were strong social class boundaries on the ranch and the owner and his family did not socialize with the workers and their resident families, mostly working-class blacks. There were strong invisible lines on the farm property: the white picket fence surrounding the ranch house held Joan inside, except for Friday nights when Stan would take Joan into town to show her off like a trophy in Gilardi's Tavern for dinner and dancing with the other young farming couples.

(Insert scanned photo of Joan, the pin-up girl in shorts with long red nails sitting on the wing of the bi-plane Stan build parked by the silos on the ranch. His trophies.)

When they went to Hemit Stan and Joan Newton were a popular couple. Again, 18 year old Joan was well liked because of her quick wit and conversation, as well as her looks. Many stunt flyers from the movie studios like to come up to be with the guys at the flight school as well as the guys who were testing experimental military aircraft up the road at what was to become Edwards Air Force Base (See the first 40 minutes of the movie "The Right Stuff" for more on this). Stan and Joan were part of the 'flying' crowd that hung around at Pancho's bar on Friday nights drinking and dancing to the jukebox.

The stunt flyers were dying a little too easily making those exciting movies. They came up to Hemit for the weekends. After one well-liked flyer died, they all sat in Pancho's one night and decided to band together for safety and to start the Motion Picture Stun Pilot's Association. Joan was there in the middle of it, scratching notes on the cocktail napkins. This was the first of two unions Joan had a part in starting.

Back in Stratford, Jesse was lonely without Stan and Joan around.

In May of 1940, before Stan had finished his A&E course, he was forced to take Joan back to the ranch to have Judith Adair, her first daughter. Forever after, Joan said that this bent Stan into a broken man, he did not finish his dream.

However, Jesse was delighted, he helped Joan all he could with the baby. Again, he made Stan stay around, since he held the money bag over Stan's head. He drilled Stan with the responsibilities and obligations he should show to Joan, baby Judy, the ranch, and his father.

When Judy was born, Stan was embarrassed. He had bet with all his farmer and flying drinking buddies that he would have a son. He didn't. He had a split-tail (girl). They laughed at him. He could not father a son. This was just another failing on his part. Stan took it seriously. He started drinking very heavily.