The Ghosts of Crestview Manor (Re-written) by Julianna Rowe

CHAPTER ONE:   Reflecting 

                I was standing at the sink washing the usual stack of daily dishes when my mind began to wander.  You know, like when you're driving, and it happens, you forget how you got where you were going.

              I began thinking of my Nana. 

 What was she really like?  And upon reflecting, I recall thinking she was more important to me than I was to her.  I had never realized it until that day when my mind left the building.  Oddly, she reminds me of my best friend Jacque, the finisher of my emotional ties to Nana. Jacque came into my life in my twenties and replaced the lost love and abandonment I had felt from my Nana. I believe she is the friend I called into my life to finish the incorrect dream of who I thought Nana was but wasn’t, although Nana was a woman of interest and a positive force in my life.  I met her when I was four years old when my Grandfather brought her to our home.  Nana was his second wife, and she was beautiful.  Auburn hair and skin the color of milk.  I had never felt skin so soft, nor had I seen such large breasts.  Her petite frame glistened with wealthy energy, just like her long red fingernails.  She wore furs and fine linens and draped her gentle demeanor.  She adorned the most delicate gold jewelry on her soft, gentle skin.  She was class, and I spotted it at my young age.  As I grew up, she would take me to the finest stores and buy me the finest clothes.  My first pair of high heels was at age twelve for my confirmation against my mother’s wishes, of course.  The story goes she was engaged to Gene Autry when she met my Grandfather.  But then the story goes, Grandfather rode with Poncho Via.

            My Grandparents lived in the Crestview addition on the side of a mountain in Los Angeles.  The backyard was landscaped with walls cascading down the mountain's side.  Of course, it was just a large hill, but it was a mountain to me.  When you stood in the living room or on the deck in the evening, it was a sight to behold.  The entire city of Austin lit up like a million stars.  A place most can only dream of living.  A huge bear rug lay on the floor of the living room in front of the fireplace.  Nana shot that bear herself.  I have a photo of the kill as they were avid hunters.  They spent weeks on horseback camping in the Wyoming Range, and that bear rug was to be mine upon her death.  I spent many a day lying on it, looking into its glass eyes and touching the terrifying teeth with no fear. 

I was a princess, and I had a castle.  My bedroom consisted of four twin poster beds, all hand carved from Europe.  I was surrounded by a dressing table with silver mirrors and deep pink satin quilted bedspreads and my private bathroom.  I can remember the smell to this day.  That particular smell of elegance.  The drapes were heavy and consoling. I had unique dolls, but they had to stay at Nana’s house, which was fine with me, for they had mink coats just like hers.  Every Christmas, we would find the latest toys under the tree.  A fond memory is the Posie Doll who walked and another who talked. My life was complete. 

           My destiny was already secured at such a perfect age.  I was too young to understand, but the drinking was all around.  Grandfather would do his native Indian dances after a few shots of Canadian Club.  One night while preparing for a dinner party, I was in the kitchen with Nana when she dropped the entire bowl of tossed salad to the floor. A carpeted floor, no less. She gently and ever so quietly whispered with a hint of a giggle while nudging me to help her pick it up and be presented it to her guests later that evening.  Naturally, I was told to keep this to myself, which I did, and I did not partake in eating that salad.  I never forgot the salad incident and later realized it was an alcohol-induced situation.  Everything was hidden that was real.  Life was a fantasy to me in those years, and I never saw the reality of it for many decades. Sometimes ancestry cells are cemented within our minds.

            One day my Grandparents moved.  I never questioned it as I wasn’t age-appropriate to notice at the time.  They moved to a friendly neighborhood suburb of Los Angeles.  Certainly not like Crestview, but to me, all was the same.  This particular home had a “summer house” adjacent to it, adjoining to that a “utility house” where laundry, freezers, and another entire kitchen lived.  Stacks of bulk groceries were stored in this small house, along with another bathroom and shower.  The summer house was a marvel of everything imaginable for comfort.

            A cowboy, cowgirls dream.  Leather furniture with studded edges of brass, lamps made from the actual hooves, and legs of the animals taken on the hunts.  The lampshade sections were sewn together with rawhide string depicting photographs of the very animals whose foot or leg was lighting this museum of Wyoming hunting and Indian relics.  The walls were covered with Moose, Elk, Ram, Deer, Antelope, and Bear busts.  Bookcases wrapped around one entire side of the five hundred square foot room and housed a collection of novels, history books, and National Geographic’s.  Along another wall was a large table.  On that table was an Indian teepee approximately five feet tall. Running through the teepee was an actual operating train set that stopped, started, and went through mountains and grain mills where its cars were loaded and unloaded.  What a thrill for a child; it was my favorite place.   The smell of leather danced through the air from the saddles that hung in one corner, not to mention the gun collection.  Grandfather taught me to shoot when I was about ten years old.  He took me out into the woods, where he told me to lay on the ground on my tummy.  He then placed a pillow against my shoulder and positioned a twelve-gauge shotgun on that pillow. Little did I know what was coming.  Indeed we should have started out slower, but that was not Granddaddy’s style.  So I aimed and pulled that trigger, and my little body shot backward pillow and all at the least a couple feet.  I liked it!  I also got to shoot the old colt 45. I didn’t know which I liked better.  I learned to aim and shoot quite well during that part of my life which has come in handy at local carnivals. 

            Grandfather and Nana went to all the grand openings of the finest Hotels in California, Texas, and Virginia.   They hunted on President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ranch, I know for sure because I have his old moving pictures of it.  They took my parents along, and President Lyndon Johnson’s butler cared for their every need.  He wanted to take my Father’s boots and socks off, something Father wasn’t so used to, yet Daddy told that story repeatedly till he died. Yes, they lived the high life and wore the finest linens and knew the who’s who to do it.

            Grandfather built me an authentic playhouse in the back of the Summerhouse.  Genuine, meaning it had its own electricity, its own little porchlight, running water into a tiny kitchen sink, and a table and chairs.  I would take my dolls with their mink coats to my own little house, where I felt like a total princess.  And then disaster struck.

            No, he didn’t die.  He moved two of my cousins into his home to live, and he forgot about me. Abandoned. He was a master narcissist……he had worked very hard to get my brother and me from our parents, and when that didn’t work, he moved on.  He conned two of his daughters out of one of their children, one a boy and the other a girl.  He and Nana couldn’t have children, so they made the next best move.  They not only abandoned my brother and me in the earthly realm of his scheme…. but in my heart also.

            My dolls and their minks were no longer mine but given to someone else.  My room was no longer mine but passed on.  My playhouse, my bear rug, my satin bedspreads, my train set and teepee, my shooting lessons, my Grandfather and Nana had moved on to others.  Abandoned.

            How was I to know it was all about control.  In every area, Grandfather wanted control to the extent of taking someone else’s children.  They, Nana and Pop, couldn’t have my brother and me, so the fake love was over, along with the monetary gifts and possessions. All were gone, and I took it as a severe rejection because no one ever explained to me what had happened.  I thought I wasn’t good enough. If I had only known everything Grandfather ever did was to ultimately benefit him.

            It all started when I was five, and my Grandfather and Nana would make regular trips to Virginia to visit my parents at home. My father and his brother built by hand from the ground up.  Granddad always had a personal mental goal, and these trips were to flash his money, jewelry, and cars until he enticed my parents to leave everything familiar to them for his exemplary life in California.  And so they did.  But first, we drove downtown to the local Chevrolet Dealership and bought a brand new shiny 1956 Chevy Belair, crème and bronze.   My parents sold the house Dad and his brother built, packed our belongings, and headed for California and a better life.  That was the beginning of an odd string of events that would end when my parents told Grandfather and Nana they could not have my brother and me, their children.  The promises made to my parents of the high life were never seen.  My Father was overworked and underpaid.  That gave Granddad the control he needed to get the outcome he was after.  It didn’t work.  At age thirteen, they packed our belongings once again, rented a U-Haul that Father pulled behind his 1956 Blue Chevy truck, and headed across the country back to Virginia with one cat in the back seat, a Chihuahua in the front seat, and a bird cage somewhere in between with Pete, the parakeet in it. 

            Father’s truck wasn’t in the best shape to pull the overloaded U-haul, and it showed.  When we hit the Ozark Mountain Range, “Old Blue” gave it all she had, but twice we lost sight of Father and my brother and had to turn around only to find “Old Blue” couldn’t make it up the mountain with her load.  Father had to coast back down and give the old truck a long head start to make it up before the hill, and he did, but just barely and ever so slowly.  I now know the stress they encountered during those years in California and the trip back.  

          My Aunt, my Father’s sister, had loaned them the money to get back home.  There wasn’t any extra for breakdowns of any sort.  Not to mention the breakdown I wanted and deserved to have, considering I had left my life and friends forever.

            I had a boyfriend back in California.  A really nice young man.  Indeed too old for me, but never-the-less we had a connection.  Even at that tender age, I thought I was in love.  I believe I was to the extent it was possible.  I was barely a teen by a few months, and he was fifteen.  We were in Jr. High, and I was fully grown physically at 34-24-34.  Not the best thing to happen to a pretty young girl at that age, along with looking much older altogether.  Add the fact living in a large city is different than in a small farm community we were heading for.  Regardless, it was a sad day to leave Harold Boyer.  Every day after school, we would meet at the local soda fountain.  He would buy us a soda with two straws.  We would sit and stare at each other for a long time and giggle.  We would ride on his white moped up into the mountains overlooking Lake Henry, the wind blowing against us, giving me the opportunity to hold on around his waist as tight as possible.  He was tall and lean with beautiful black shiny, slicked hair.   He was of French descent, making his skin look like a perfect tan year round.  He was a cross between Elvis and the Fonz.  His gentleness came through each kiss he presented me. Yes, gave it like it was a gift.  (I  have no clue where I told my Mother I was, but I sure didn’t tell her I was on a moped in the hills)  We never entered into sexual relations, of course.  I realize the age sounds out of line with the acts, but even as I sit here today at age 52 (re-typing it at age 70, 74), I remember him.  I remember the bond we shared as good friends.  On my last night in California, he came over to my Grandparents to say goodbye, and I will never forget he cried.  One last hug and one last gentle kiss with tears falling between tender lips, then a sudden break as he walked away, his tears fell silently.  I never saw him again until I was fifteen and I visited California.  I hear he married a girl named LeVonne, who was in one of our Jr. High classes when I lived there.  I wonder where they are?  Someone said Sacramento. I have fond memories of my Junior High School years; I have a few of them as Facebook friends.