Communion Wine

My dad is still undergoing evaluations to determine what is going on with his mental state, which has declined quite suddenly in the past month. While he was still "himself," he shared the following story with me so I could write it as part of a final project for one of my classes last semester. I've been struggling a lot--more than I know how to express--with the possibility that my dad, as I knew him, may be gone forever. But he had a lot of great stories, and that's something we can hold on to. Here's one of them:

The hotel banquet hall echoed with the boisterousness of the American soldiers who had gathered for dinner. The year was 1960, and the 79th U.S. Army Band, based at Fort Clayton, Panama, was in the middle of a ten-day visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The trip was part of “Operation Friendship,” a goodwill initiative designed by the Army to ease the tension created by U.S. control of the Panama Canal Zone. Through Operation Friendship, the 79th Army Band had performed at every high school in Panama and was now traveling to various South American embassies.

Winston, a soldier from Beaumont, Texas, sat at one end of the table. Winston had left college a few years earlier to enlist in the Army and was touring with the 79th as a trombonist. Joining the Army had been an adventure for the southeast Texas preacher’s son, but military life had presented Winston with some challenges. Having grown up in the Church of Christ, Winston had been taught two crucial life concepts. First, Christians should always go to church, every Sunday, no matter where they are. Second, Christians must not consume alcohol. Trying to maintain these standards while serving in the Army was difficult, if not impossible, Winston had discovered. Nevertheless, he tried to cling to his convictions and hoped that, when he succeeded, his soldier peers would notice and be influenced to make good moral choices in their own lives.

During its South American travels, the band had stopped in Bogota, Colombia, where Winston knew to be wary of the drinking water. There in Bogota, he shared his dilemma with a Catholic priest, who had advised Winston to drink communion wine. This kind of wine typically contained only three percent alcohol—enough to kill bacteria but not enough to get him drunk. This should keep him healthy during the band’s South American travels and should not compromise his convictions too much, the priest had said.

Now in the rambunctious banquet hall at the hotel in Rio, Winston perused the beverage offerings on the menu. His eyes came to a stop at “vino de communion.” Communion wine. He planned to drink a little with dinner and go to bed with a mostly easy conscience. He pointed his selection out to the waiter, who nodded and walked away.

As waiters began delivering bottles of beer to the rest of the 79th, Winston heard the sound of squeaky wheels and turned to see his waiter wheeling out a cart carrying a two-gallon hinged decanter full of red wine. The waiter stopped the cart at Winston’s chair, filled his glass, and walked away—leaving the cart. By talking to a waiter with a rough command of English, Winston realized that “vino de communion” meant “wine of the community” and was meant to serve a large group of people. As he sipped on the wine, he realized something else: it had a much stronger alcohol content than three percent.

Every night during the band’s ten-day stay, the same waiter wheeled out the same decanter for Winston to drink from during dinner. He only took a few sips. By the last night, which was a Saturday, the decanter was still more than three-quarters full. Winston’s roommates asked if they could have the rest of the wine to go with the poker party they had planned in the hotel room for that night. Winston gladly gave it to them and, trying desperately to hang on to his convictions, went to bed early. True to his upbringing, he planned to seek out a church to attend the next day.

At 6:30 the next morning, Winston got up to find the decanter drained dry and his three roommates passed out. Two bodies slumped on the floor and a third sprawled across one of the beds. After checking to make sure they were breathing, Winston carefully stepped over the bodies of the men he had hoped to influence for good, and walked out the door to go to church. He may have left a roomful of hung over men in his wake, but Winston—as best he could on an Army trip to Rio de Janeiro—had stuck to his convictions.

The Gifted Class

Skipping ahead a bit in my memoirs to the nightmare that was 6th grade. Names of people and the school have been changed, and I've intentionally left out the name of the town. Warning: this contains some material not suitable for children. It's pretty sad when something that happened to you at 11 is "not suitable for children," isn't it?

The Gifted Class
By Deana Nall

Loaded down with books, my gym bag and a clarinet, I trudged into the school building. Baker Middle School. We students called it Baker Mental School. It housed our small town’s 6th and 7th-grades. Despite its location well within the borders of the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave, Baker functioned as an isolated, totalitarian society. There were no extra-curricular activities. Those didn’t start until 8th grade, in junior high. Baker had no sports teams, no school colors, no mascot, no yearbook and no student government. Teachers were stationed in the hallways between classes, yelling at us to “keep to the right” while we changed classes and making sure we only went to our lockers before school, during lunch, and after the day’s last bell. Going to our lockers any other time was strictly forbidden.

School wasn’t pleasant for anyone, but my 6th-grade year had dealt me an especially cruel hand. In elementary school, I had been the funny girl—the one who made everyone laugh. Upon entering middle school, I discovered my sense of humor was no longer wanted. In fact, it was annoying. My friends from elementary school had mostly abandoned me for new social circles. Meanwhile, my body had morphed from cute little girlness into absolute preteen horror. I still had some baby fat, but I was extraordinarily bony. This made for an especially unattractive combination. Other girls were already wearing bras, but my boobs were nowhere in sight. I tried to maintain some optimism, telling myself that my development was only slightly delayed. If I had known that I was to remain flat-chested until my mid-20s, I probably would have killed myself.

Ugly and friendless, I reluctantly pulled the door open and walked in. At least today was Friday. Friday was the only bright spot in my week. Every Friday after lunch, all the 6th-graders who had qualified for the gifted program met in Mr. Renner’s room. Mr. Renner was the gifted and talented class teacher and very popular with students. We did fun things in his class. We played games and had fascinating discussions. Mr. Renner had new and imaginative things for us to do in his class every week. One day, he set up a mirror on a table and had us put a piece of paper on the table next to the mirror and try to write, looking only into the mirror and not at our paper. When we drew a line to the right in the mirror, it drew it to the left on our paper. It was incredibly frustrating. After we had all given up, someone asked why he had asked us to do this.

“This is what it’s like for someone with a learning disability to write,” he said. “You kids will never have to worry about that, and now you know how hard it is for them. I know you will never make fun of those kids now that you know what it’s like.”

This was a valuable lesson to us, and we somberly digested it.


One day in Mr. Renner’s class, we were playing a history game when World War II came up in our conversation.

“Did you know some people think Hitler was a virgin his entire life?” Mr. Renner asked.

What? I thought. I had only heard the word “virgin” associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus. I thought it was part of her name: Virgin Mary. What could anything connected to Mary have to do with someone as evil as Hitler?

“What’s a virgin?” I asked.

Mr. Renner glanced at me nervously.

“A virgin is someone who has never had sex before,” he answered.

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. If I had known the answer had anything to do with sex, I never would have asked.

The bell rang, and everyone gathered their books and began filing out the door. I was the last one, and before I could leave, Mr. Renner grabbed my arm.

“When you asked me what a virgin was, did you really not know, or did you just want to hear me say it?” he asked. He wasn’t angry, just inquisitive.

His hand was still on my arm. I didn’t like how it felt. Why was he asking me this?

“I…I really didn’t know,” I said.

“OK. Well, see you Sunday,” he said.

He released his grip on my arm and I left. He would see me Sunday because he also went to my church. I was glad he did. Mr. Renner was the most popular teacher at school, and the fact that our families mingled at church increased my pathetically-low cool factor. At least I hoped it did.

The next week, I forgot about the weird encounter with Mr. Renner. When I walked into his classroom that Friday afternoon, he gestured toward some books he had propped up on the blackboard’s chalk tray.

“I brought books that are a little more advanced than the ones in the school library,” he said. “Feel free to borrow them and bring them back next week.”

I looked at the books and chose one that had two teenage girls on the cover. After I got it home and began reading, I realized it was about two high school students who were in love with each other, even though they were both girls. I had heard about people being gay, but the concept was still new to me. In the book, the girls try to keep their relationship a secret, but an older boy at school finds out. Consumed with rage and disgust, the boy forces one of the girls into his car, drives into the woods and rapes her. The concept of homosexuality was new to me and I didn’t really understand it, but the fact that the girl in the book was raped for being gay traumatized me. The rape scene was so graphic that its words burned into my memory and it replayed in my head for months afterward. The book also included some detailed sex scenes between the girls, but the violent rape scene is what stayed with me. I knew that I had read something I probably should not have read at the tender age of 11, but Mr. Renner had said these were advanced books. Grown-ups read about different things than kids do, I reasoned. He’s just trying to challenge us to read about grown-up issues.

After I returned that book, Mr. Renner gave me a new one. It was Halloween, the book version of the popular horror movie. I took it home and began reading. The story opened with a teenage girl and her boyfriend having sex. Afterward, the boy leaves and the girl is brutally murdered by her younger brother, who had watched the sexual encounter. After the first chapter, I threw the book on the floor. I was beginning to think I was not cut out for “advanced reading.” Maybe I wasn’t really gifted and had been allowed into the program by mistake.

The next week at school, an announcement came over the loud speaker that the gifted class would not meet that Friday. Rumors were soon flying around school that Mr. Renner had been fired. I got home and learned it was true. Mr. Renner was gone and the gifted class, the one bright spot in my life, would not meet for the rest of the year.

One day, a girl stopped me in the hall.

“I just think you should know that everyone knows you got Mr. Renner fired,” she said.

I hadn’t done anything but bring the books home that Mr. Renner had described as “advanced reading.” I went home and told my dad what the kids were saying. He said he had found the Halloween book in my room, found Mr. Renner’s name written in it, and went to confront Mr. Renner. Before my dad could say anything, Mr. Renner told him he had just been fired for giving students inappropriate books to read. Apparently other parents had complained, but, because word got out that my dad was upset about the books, everyone thought I was the reason Mr. Renner was gone. The kids who had been simply annoyed by my sense of humor now hated me.


That spring was my ballet recital. During intermission, I was sitting backstage in a costume that accentuated every awful thing about my body. My hair was wound into a tight bun on top of my head, and a mob of little girls in white tu-tus swarmed around me. I felt a sickeningly familiar hand on my arm. I looked up into Mr. Renner’s face. His little girl Michelle was one of the white tu-tu girls. He sat down next to me. He had stopped coming to church, and I had not seen him since the day I had chosenHalloween from the chalk tray.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

I said nothing. I wanted him to leave. Michelle spun past us in her white tu-tu.

“Look at me, Daddy!” she said.

Mr. Renner nodded at his daughter and said, “I miss being at school. That was a fun class.”

I stayed quiet. Mr. Renner kept sitting there. He tried again.

“I didn’t want to leave, you know,” he said.

Still silent, I shifted nervously, and my tulle-laden costume crinkled in response.

Michelle spun past us again, her white tu-tu brushing across both of our legs. She stretched her arms up and executed an awkwardly floppy cartwheel. We sat quietly and watched her.

“Watch me, Daddy!” she said. “Are you watching?”

We both sat there in silence in a sea of white tu-tus.

Finally, he slowly stood up and walked away.

Roswell (incomplete)

I grasped the knob of the color TV set with my 5-year-old fingers and turned it to the right to produce a satisfying “click.” As the screen crackled with static electricity, the picture gradually formed. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman appeared to save another day, and my Saturday morning had begun.

We had moved to Roswell, New Mexico, several months earlier for my dad to take a ministry job. Roswell was a normal, quiet town then. No conventions for alien enthusiasts yet. Just a dry, dusty town, but the view of the famed El Capitan mountain in the distance helped make up for the town’s drabness.

The TV was new in our house. We had replaced our black and white TV with this new Curtis Mathis color set and now, Saturday mornings were the highlight of my week. My parents warned us not to wake them up too early on Saturdays, but my brother Brian and I were never tempted to. We were content to watch Saturday morning cartoons in this vibrant new world of color television.

On this particular morning, my mom was out of town while my dad slumbered on in their room down the hall. Brian and I perched ourselves on the couch and became entranced in Wonder Woman’s adventures. I wanted those bracelets of hers that could deflect enemy bullets. I think Brian just wanted Lynda Carter. Suddenly, Brian yelled and jumped from the couch. I sat frozen, aware of the fact that if something was bad enough to rattle my older brother, it could be even worse news for me. But then again, it never took much to freak Brian out.

From where he stood in the middle of the living room, he pointed in mute shock at our cat, Tippy, who I thought had been curled up asleep just a moment before. She had something under her paw. Something small that moved. At first glance, I thought she had caught a mouse and was eating it. But a closer look revealed that Tippy was holding a newborn kitten in her paws while her rough tongue cleared the placenta away.

In the few seconds it took me to assess what was happening, Brian had run down the hall, kicked my parents’ bedroom door open so hard that the door knob thunked into the wall, startled our dad out of a deep sleep, and yelled, “Tippy’s having kittens in front of the TV set!”

We had known for weeks that Tippy was pregnant. I just thought it was something of a permanent condition and never imagined it would culminate in such Saturday-morning excitement. Brian dashed back to the living room and pointed at Tippy amid breathless chants of “See? See?” to my dad, who had sleepily stumbled down the hall behind him. Our dad confirmed that yes, Tippy had become an active participant in the miracle of life right there on our living room floor. And mommy cats like to be alone when their babies are born. So my dad found a shallow box for Tippy and her rapidly expanding family, and we quickly dressed and left the house, Wonder Woman forgotten.

Hobbs, Part II

I don’t remember leaving the store. Later that day, I sat on my bed, grieving the loss of my first best friend. The phone rang. After a minute, my mother came into my room.

“Christi’s OK,” she said. “She just got a little bruised up.”

“She’s not dead?” I asked.

My mother looked startled.

“No, she’s not dead. What gave you that idea?”

“She closed her eyes. She looked dead.”

My mother spent several more minutes convincing me that Christi was not dead. I finally believed her.

There is a blissful ignorance that defines the preschool years. I was 3 and 4 when we lived in Hobbs, and my life consisted of playing in our wonderful four-bedroom house, playing with friends at church, playing with the neighborhood kids and playing with our dog, Snoopy. Snoopy and I spent long afternoons in the backyard. I was an imaginative child and he accompanied me on my imaginary adventures. Snoopy often played the role of a young prince who was being chased by an evil witch who wanted his crown. I had been charged with his protection, which I took seriously. We would run through the yard to escape the witch’s terrifying grasp and jump into the storage shed just in time as she whizzed by on her broom. Thanks to my valiant efforts, the witch never caught up with Prince Snoopy, and the crown was preserved.

My brother Brian was gone to school all day, and, on the days that no friends or neighbors came over, Snoopy was my closest friend. I felt such a connection with him that I didn’t think twice about lapping up some water out of his dish on the back porch on a hot summer’s day. After taking a long drink from his water dish one day, I looked up to see my mother’s horrified face through the kitchen window. She brought me in, made me gargle with my dad’s Scope mouthwash, filled a glass jar with water and showed me where she put it in the refrigerator. When I get thirsty, she said, I was to come in and get a drink from the jar and not from Snoopy’s dish. I agreed to her demands, but I still didn’t understand what the big deal was.

One day, something happened that, at least for a moment, shattered my childhood delusion that I was always protected from everything. I was walking alone down the sidewalk on our street to a friend’s house. Suddenly, a car screeched from around the corner and sped past me before its two right tires hopped up on the sidewalk about ten feet ahead of me. The car kept speeding, half of it still on the sidewalk, until it dropped back down off the curb. A police cruiser, sirens blaring, raced past me in pursuit of the car. I probably didn’t realize then that I could have died had the car jumped the curb ten feet sooner. But I did feel rattled. I walked home and sat alone and quiet in my room the rest of the afternoon. I never told my parents what happened.

Every summer, we made the 14-hour drive from Hobbs to Houston and Beaumont, Texas, where my grandparents lived. The contrast between small, flat and arid Hobbs and large, bustling and humid Houston was almost overwhelming to me. I loved the endless masses of freeways that snaked their way through the city. I loved the zoo and museums and Toys R Us, which Brian and I thought was the closest to heaven we would get in our lifetime. And I loved the frigid blast of my grandparents’ air-conditioned house after a day of shopping in Houston’s 98-percent humidity. Beaumont, where my other grandparents lived, was also an exciting escape from our southeast New Mexico norm. It was, in my mind, simply a smaller version of Houston.

The summer I was four, we were sitting down to dinner at my Houston grandparents’ house when I began to feel quite ill. We had been to the Houston Museum of Natural Science that day, and I had seen a picture of a bloody battle scene that had grossed me out a little. I did not want to eat, and the more my parents tried to push food on me, the worse I felt. I went to bed early and I remember being awakened in the middle of the night, having my robe wrapped around me, and being put into the backseat of the car. My parents drove me to a hospital, where I was diagnosed with a severe case of pneumonitis. The doctor described the illness as something between bronchitis and pneumonia, and inching closer to pneumonia by the minute. He instructed my parents to get me back to New Mexico’s arid climate immediately. We returned to my grandparents’ house, where I fell asleep and dreamed I was flying across the sky like a bird. I awoke in my bed in our Hobbs house. My parents had driven the 14 hours straight through and delirium had kept me asleep—or at least unaware of my surroundings--the entire trip.

The arid Hobbs air cleared my lungs and I was back to good health within a few weeks. It was good to get my energy back and resume my favorite activities, which still included watching the Brady Bunch. I longed for a two-story house like theirs and a stylish station wagon like the one Mrs. Brady drove. I wanted blond pigtails, an endearing lisp, and a cute name like “Cindy.” That family, I thought, had the perfect life.

I now know that my own real life was as perfect as it could have been at that point. I had a stable family and, while we weren’t wealthy, all my needs were provided for. I had a best friend and a dog, and the innocent youth that protected me from knowing too much about the real world. But the happy Hobbs years were coming to an end. My father had, once again, grown unhappy in his work situation. A church in Roswell, New Mexico, needed a youth minister. So we packed, I said goodbye to Christi, and we drove another moving truck to another small New Mexico town.

Hobbs, Part I

Moving from the rental house on Birch St. in Lovington to the brick parsonage in Hobbs was a step up for my family. The house even had a fourth bedroom. A fourth bedroom! The only other family I knew that had a fourth bedroom was the Brady Bunch. I figured that if my family ever got an Alice, she could stay in that extra bedroom. Until then, my mom moved her sewing machine in there.

Hobbs was only 18 miles down the highway from Lovington, but it was a much happier place to live. The sun seemed to shine more brightly there. Most days were so clear that my mother could look out the back window to the bank sign several blocks away and tell me the time and temperature when I asked.

As any minister’s family, we plunged into the life of the church where my dad worked. This is where I met Christi, my first best friend. Christi was a brown-eyed tomboy with a clump of blond curls on her head. We made an enthusiastic pair of 3-year-olds. I spent many nights at her house and I became intrigued with her life. She had an Italian last name, she shared a bedroom with a teenage sister, she had a Chihuahua named Pebbles and her house included a formal living room that was strictly for grown-ups—no children allowed. These details added up to the fact that Christi’s life was much more interesting than mine.

My mother and Christi’s mother were also good friends, which put us together even more often. The four of us took shopping excursions to the J.C. Penney in Hobbs. This was before Penney’s became a staple anchor of the sprawling malls that had not yet reached our part of the country. The Hobbs store was on Main St., in an old row of buildings with holes from hitching posts still in the ground out front. Penney’s had a main floor and a long, straight staircase up one side of the building, which led to the children’s department. One day when the store was crowded, Christi and I sat down on the top step of the staircase. Sitting very cautiously still, I told Christi to stop bouncing around so much because she might fall.

“I’m not going to fall,” she said.

In the next moment, Christi fell. I watched in horror as Christi bounced and rolled down the entire length of that staircase. She came to a sickeningly still stop on the landing, limp and eyes closed. That’s what people did in the movies when they died. They closed their eyes. I knew my sweet friend was dead.

To be continued...

Lovington Part II

My dad went to a mysterious place called “work” every morning. I don’t know when I realized he worked at our church. Our church was a red brick building with a steeple, which made it unusual. We were members of the Church of Christ, and many of our sister congregations viewed steeples as unnecessary ornamentation.

My dad was the youth minister at our church. Youth ministry was new back then and there was no training in the area yet. No books, no models of youth ministry, no Christian rock bands. My dad knew only that he had grown to hate church as a teenager and he wanted to make church more teen-friendly. He held after-church evening devotionals in which he dimmed the lights while youth group members sat in a circle on the floor of the fellowship hall and sang “Kum Bah Ya.” The church elders learned of this practice and put a stop to it, saying singing on the floor in the dark could cause something called “emotionalism,” something the Church of Christ has traditionally feared.

My dad responded by moving these devotionals away from the church building so the elders would be less likely to find out what was going on there. One night, the youth group went to a park and sat in a circle on the grass. I was a ridiculously cute 2-year-old by then, and the teen girls argued over whose lap I would sit in. Settling into the winner’s lap, with the girl’s arms protecting mine from the cool wind, I looked up into southeast New Mexico’s only natural beauty: the clear night sky. It looked as though someone had flung a diamond-studded ebony sheet high above our heads. The youth group must have worn out “Kum Bah Ya” because my dad began singing “How Great Thou Art.” The teens joined in, and when we got to the line about the rolling thunder and I still felt so safe in the girl’s arms beneath the enormous twinkling sky, I thought that if we could sing about thunder in such a beautiful setting, it may not be that scary after all.

If the night sky was Lovington’s only redeeming quality, the nearby town of Hobbs was its respite. Hobbs was the place to go if you wanted to go to McDonald’s or a doctor. I had been born in Hobbs since Lovington had no hospital. Hobbs also had a Kmart, a large car dealership and a busy business district. We drove there every week for my brother’s piano lessons. If you needed something Hobbs couldn’t offer, such as surgery or a prom dress that didn’t look like everyone else’s, you drove two-and-a-half hours to Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock was an actual city—a metropolitan oasis surrounded by dirt and cotton fields on the Llano Estacado of the Texas Panhandle. Lubbock had department stores, a giant mall and a college people had actually heard of. We made a trip to Lubbock every November, and my dad carefully corralled my brother and me while my mom made secret purchases. A month later, we opened Christmas presents that could not have come from Lovington or Hobbs. I had heard Christmas presents came from the North Pole, but I suspected mine came from Lubbock, Texas.

What I did not know then was that my parents paid for those presents with my grandparents’ money. Our church elders believed ministers should only be paid what they needed to provide for their families. Back in Beaumont, my dad’s CPA salary put my parents in a nice house, on the guest lists of charitable events and on the fringe of the town’s higher social circles. But now my grandparents paid for all the extras, such as Christmas presents, birthday presents and piano lessons. Right before I turned three, a church in Hobbs made my dad a better offer, which included a four-bedroom brick parsonage. More than the money and the house, my dad was restless. Stuck with a vocation that was not his first choice, he seemed to find some contentment in a change of scenery. We made the familiar trip to Hobbs once more, but this time in a moving truck with everything we owned. We were not finished with Lovington, however. Or perhaps it was not finished with us.

Lovington, Part I

Since my coursework is the only writing I have time for right now, I decided to post some of the things I've been working on this semester. For my Nonfiction: Biography/Autobiography class, I've been working on my memoirs. Here is the first bit of a 50+ page assigment. Enjoy.


Somehow, New Mexico became the answer.

My dad was using an accounting degree he never wanted. He had music in his blood, not numbers. But his CPA father had dreams of “Hamby & Hamby” on the sign outside the firm in their southeast Texas town of Beaumont. He would only pay for college if my dad got an accounting degree. This is how my dad became a CPA against his will.

But forced careers will only get you so far. By the time he and my mom had a toddler, my dad needed another job. Something that wouldn’t kill him from the inside-out. There was only one vocation more noble than accounting to his father. If my dad went into ministry, he could escape the number-crunching and still have his father’s blessing. And a family friend knew of a church in New Mexico. So my parents sold their house, packed their stuff, and with a 4-year-old in the backseat and me tucked away in my mother’s womb, they said goodbye to all four of my grandparents. Then they set off for a drive clear across Texas.

Parts of New Mexico are breathtaking. The ancestral puebloan ruins of Chaco Canyon in the northwest. The centuries-old churches of Santa Fe. The mountains of Taos that lie under a blanket of pristine snow. Stately mesas that line the horizon beneath a massive canopy of clean blue sky.

Lovington was near none of this. Lovington sulked away in the forgotten and lonely southeast corner of the state. The town smelled of stockyards and a soon-to-close oil refinery. The relentless wind kept a fresh layer of dirt on everything. There were a few elegant homes, which were a mystery to me since I couldn’t imagine how people got rich out there. Neighborhoods of poor to modest homes filled out the rest of the town. On the outskirts, Mexican migrant workers dwelled in trailers with rubber tires on top to keep the never-ending wind from blowing the roofs away. Decades later, a Lovington High School graduate named Brian Urlacher would become the NFL Rookie of the Year and finally bring a gleam of pride to the town’s eye. But in 1971, Lovington had no one to cheer for; no future to hope in. Just dirt, wind and a horizon that was too far away.

My parents rented a house on Birch Street. I showed up a few months later, rounding us out to a family of four. My mother had grown up the child of an Army officer, and she had come of age in exotic places like Panama and Japan. Now she was the mother of two young children in a drying-up oil town that stood on the verge of being blown across the New Mexico desert at any moment. She took her circumstances in stride, however, and created a safe, happy home for my brother and me.

My memories in the Birch Street house are of gradually becoming aware of the world around me. I woke up in my crib from a nap one day and decided the crib railing would be a nice place to sit while I looked at a book. Suddenly, everything became a rushed blur as I fell backward and landed with a thud on the floor. My cries brought my mother, who scooped me up, took me to the living room couch and distracted me from my trauma with the bright color pictures of a catalog. I had learned, as all young children do, that gravity, while necessary, can be a merciless enemy.

I developed a fear of storms in Lovington. A tiny town on the broad New Mexico plains has nowhere to hide from the Armageddon-like storms that would brew in the late spring skies. A sudden gust of cool wind on a warm evening told us nature’s rage was on its way. Within minutes, the sky turned the color of a deep bruise and flashes of lightning jagged all around. Once we were watching out the window and an especially large dagger of lightning stabbed down toward the earth. For the fraction of a second that it was visible, we saw two long spikes shoot upward, like angry rabbit ears.

“That one looked like Bugs Bunny,” my mother said, in an attempt to comfort me. I was still terrified. Bugs Bunny was a harmless character who made me laugh. He would never explode out of the sky and scare me out of my wits.

Thunder was the worst. Sudden loud noises are scary enough for a child, and thunder, with its mysterious origin and with no way to make it stop, created an inescapable horror. I could close a book with scary pictures, or carefully avoid my brother’s rubber snakes, but thunder had to be endured until it was gone.

(to be continued...)