Katy, Rescued
He was in the stockade again for "conduct unbecoming"
** On her birthday, I re-post this piece of the Katy archive. It is one of my favorites. I hope you like reading it as much as I loved writing it. If you have read it before, I thank you!
Katy was 18, a run-away North Dakota farm-girl. She was alone, and desperate to be loved by anybody.
She found Ralph in a tavern in Butte, Montana, a cute young soldier, full of charm, on leave from Fort Callan near San Diego. “He was so handsome in his uniform,” she told me, “so sweet, and he spoke very softly. But he was clever, too, and made me laugh.” Wearing a satin bow in her long auburn hair, Katy married Ralph six days later. It was 1941, and everyone was in a daze.
Ralph returned to the army base and a month later, sent her the train fare to come to him in California, “Just like in romance novel,” she told us. She was bursting with excitement when she stepped off the train and saw the ocean for the first time. “I could hardly breathe. I never imagined so much water. I was in California!” In La Jolla, she began a new life filled with happiness and romantic dreams. Her newfound joy was short lived.
Her husband, she learned all too soon, and too late, was a drinker. When he went AWOL one time too many, he was transferred to Camp McQuaide in Watsonville, a stockade for Army deserters. Katy left La Jolla on a bus, and followed him north. She stayed in a cheap motor court in Santa Cruz for months and found work at The Coast Creamery, a teen hangout down town.
Ralph was eventually given a medical discharge. It was the Army’s way of dealing with hopeless drunkenness in their recruits. He found menial work in Santa Cruz, and Katy continued making milkshakes and ice cream cones until their baby was born in 1943 and the Creamery let her go.
Because of his frequent binges, Ralph never held onto a job for long. They were a family in trouble. When their baby was two they moved into one room in a house that already held a family of seven. It was just “for a short time” until Ralph found another job. The next day he went out in the morning to look for work and never came back. Apparently, he’d decided that having a family was too much for him and he simply walked away.
Katy, at 25, was left with a small child, no place to live, and no money. She was on her own and scared. She appealed to the local Catholic church for advice or help, but found neither. A few days later she learned of a woman who needed someone to tend her goats. “I can’t pay you much,” she’d said, “but you are welcome to stay out in the barn with the animals if you like.” She and her child slept in the hay on a blanket.
One morning a tall, angular, somewhat disabled man in his late 30s, drove past the old feed store on Soquel Drive and stopped at the dilapidated barn across the street. Walking up to the open door, he found a lovely young woman with long ginger hair, milking a goat. She was wearing baggy blue denim trousers rolled up at the bottom and a white peasant blouse with embroidered red cherries at the neckline. Her feet were bare. A golden-haired toddler sat next to her in the hay. The scene took his breath away.
He smiled from the doorway and spoke kindly to her. “My name is Jim,” he said, shaking his head, “and I have to say, you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Sitting there on that little stool you look like an angel.” She looked away, embarrassed, not knowing what to say. “I am here because I got a phone call from Our Lady Star of the Sea church. The priest told me about a woman living in a barn who needs work.”
“Yes sir, I sure do need work, but I have my baby and can’t leave her.”
“Well, I am desperately in need of a housekeeper, someone who can cook and who will tend to my children while I am at work.” He explained to her that his wife had run off, leaving him to care for their two young boys. He really needed help. “You could live in my home and your child would be very welcome, if you think you could help me.”
Katy cried as he scooped her baby up out of the hay. He put her three cardboard boxes of belongings into his Ford station wagon. “He saved us,” she said, “just like in the movies.” She was such a dreamer.
At that time, Katy, my mother, could not know that this rescue would only last a few years, but she had good work, and she and her child were safe. That is all that mattered.
And were you that little girl?
Interesting how things work out for the best for those who are left behind. I bet it doesn't work out that way for the leaver. My mother's father did the same thing.