I always have a favorite line in each of Don's stories and for this dandy, it's his last line.

http://www.salamandersociety.com/donbagley/

“we flipped our pillows over for the dry side—-there was no cool side.”
—-Don Bagley


For those who haven’t been to Roseville, CA, it’s hotter than hell there!

I can just see you and your brothers in that garage and also watching TV and popping corn.

I was lucky in that we lived in the same house from the time I was age 3 and my disabled brother lives in that same home and I'm 60. We definitely had an interesting room downstairs that some of us took turns living in, but we never had to live in a garage in the heat. And my dad didn't have to keep changing jobs.

You and your brother have turned out great for all the agony your parents put you through.

Thanks for reading, kathleen and cl2. Thanks to cricket for posting.

I always love to read his riviting words.

Very strange parents, Don. And I thought mine were dysfunctional. They got nothing on yours.

Isn't it a wonder we survived childhood? I've thought about that at times, since the odds were stacked against me. I was locked in a car in our backyard once as a toddler, all alone and unable to get out for a very long time before help arrived. If it had been even a few more degrees warmer that day I might have suffocated. That's just one example of the neglect I endured as a child.

When I was little, especially in summertime, I had only one goal each day: to get the BLEEP out of the house and beat feet to the home of one of my friends, so we could play.

My mother stationed herself at a place where she could do surveillance on both the front and back doors. Every time she caught me trying to get out, she would call me back, and tell me to do the dishes, scrub the bathtub, fold the laundry, or whatever tiresome thing she could think of at the moment. Meanwhile, she was busy polluting the house with cigarette smoke.

Frantic to escape, I taught myself how to take the window screen off my bedroom window, being careful to hide the screen in my closet, slithering out through the window, (leaving my bedroom door locked, which was also forbidden) and closing the window behind me.

Once my parents were pounding on my door, demanding that I unlock it. I wasn't even there. My father threatened to take the door off the hinges if I didn't respond. That's what he eventually did.

Hunger eventually forced me to return, well after dark. It wasn't a pleasant reunion, and I had to live for several months without a bedroom door. I dragged my desk, chair, and bookcase to block the door so they would at least be slowed down if they tried to enter, giving me time to escape.

Even though I was constantly told that I was "bad," I didn't believe that. I was a good kid at school, got excellent grades, made friends, and when I was able to get outside the house, I led a relatively normal life.

I think that my poor father, who was essentially a gentle and loving soul, sometimes felt trapped between two tsunami-like personalities - Mother, and me. I'm told that my first word was not "ma-ma" or "da-da." It was "NO!"

I don't believe that my mother was capable of loving anyone but my father, and she was devastated to the core when he died at 42. She was 50. She began drinking heavily, making her absolute Hell on wheels to live with, and her drinking eventually cost her her job.

Is it any wonder that I chose an "away" university when I had the chance? Those years were VERY happy ones.

Good for you for getting away, catnip. The Army saved me from my father. Sure, the drill sergeants were mean, but I slept in air conditioned barracks, and I had all the food I could eat and more. Plus, they paid me.

P.S. Thanks, Amy



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2018 07:48PM by donbagley.

when you relate that Boot Camp was an improvement over your home life. I don't think many people would say that.

It was for both of us.I was glad when Don shipped out. I was sick and tired of watching dad abuse Don. Especially after the fistfight in the hallway that the whole family got to enjoy. I reported four months later, left Mark the garage room. Must of seemed damn palatial with just one no good son in it.

until I came here to read. My family seemed dysfunctional because all the mormon families around us were pretending to be something they weren't. My dad was pretty much "what you see is what you get." My mother was not very social as she was the oldest child of 2 deaf parents. She learned to sign before she learned to talk, and she learned to talk from her polygamist grandmother.

But we didn't escape to friend's houses to get away. We spent our summers on the farm hoeing beets, hauling hay, planting potatoes, taking care of sheep, showing them at the fair. We worked HARD. Then we'd come home (20 miles from our farm) and we'd have to clean the house. We had lists.

It isn't that my parents were abusive (they were in some ways), but it was just a farmer's child's life. All my friends who had fathers who were farmers lived the same life I did. I hated the farm and my grandfather (Romeo was his name) teased me that I would marry a farmer. I came really close to it. I was seriously dating a farmer when I ended up marrying my gay ex.

I would never trade my childhood now. As for a child being left in a car as a toddler. My mother worried so much, she would never have done that. She was overprotective. Made us all insane about being protective of our own kids.

That is one of the things I like the best about Don's stories is it brings so much of my own childhood back, good and bad. He has a way with words.

I enjoyed reading about your life on the farm.

I liked your farm story too. I lived on a boys ranch at fifteen, and that story is in my next book.

I was an overprotective parent of my youngsters also. In many ways I tried overcompensating for the lack of nurturing and care I'd received as a child.

My kids are thankful on the one hand I was able to raise them to adulthood, as a single mom. On the other, they at different points along the way resented my being on the neurotic side as a helicopter parent.

That's what they got for a mom, and I don't make any apologies. We lived in NYC for a few years. At the time children were being snatched off the streets or shopping malls if parents so much as looked away for a moment. What parent wasn't overprotective? I honestly didn't know any who weren't, unless they were drug addicts or had some serious mental problems. They were the ones who abandoned their children. And I was never going to do that if my life depended on it.

I grew up on a small farm in Idaho. It wasn't a perfect childhood by any means, but it did have its perks.

My mom was an absentee parent, even when she was home. It was my dad who paced me as a baby because my mom didn't want to have to get up to do that.

If I could, I would force every TBM who thinks the church does no harm to listen to every word of Don's stories.

None of us would argue about the nonsense of spiritual discernment, but where's the oversight of the almighty PH holder-abuser? That's right, there's none. The church looks the other way as every sociopath and power hungry man (and woman) rule abuses people.