Farms, Heroine, and Disappointment

Winnie’s life long dream was to have a charming, little hillbilly farm with chickens, fruit trees, and maybe a cow. Pap had no dreams. Much like an animal, he only operated on instinct. Not long after marrying my mother and settling into a life of reluctant domesticity, he disappeared for three days. Winnie was frantic. She called everyone. The police, all five of Pap’s brothers (also thugs), her mother-in-law, and every mortuary in town, but no one knew. By the evening of the third day, he staggered home. He had been at a party and tried to get sober before coming back, which took two and a half of the three days. Winnie’s hysteria astounded Pap. None of his previous wives, (meaning the two before my mother) had ever cared one bit what he did. He shot up heroin, snorted cocaine, smoked hashish, drank and played as much pinochle as he wanted, and nary a word was uttered. A year or so later my oldest sister Sue was born, and suffice it to say that she never witnessed any such activity, and much to our disappointment neither did the rest of us. Pap had been painstakingly molded into a reasonable human being by then. Pap's colorful past was something that Winnie pretended never happened. How else was she supposed to get us all to fit in, in a polite, quaint, Mormon community? By lying of course...