Biography

Eighty years of life and lessons learned

It's all there. I can see it plain as day, easier to see than what comes up when blinking your eyes. What? You can't see anything? Let me show you my view, then. It's worth the visit.


Take that little red brick house, for example.1811 Hollywood Avenue, two bedrooms on the main floor and two in the basement housing six kids and my mom, Vonda June Tucker Richardson. She's always yacking on the phone with the long extension chord in the kitchen, the proverbial homemaker cooking a meal, and such. Early on, she taught me the value of work, assigning me jobs like washing windows, doing dishes, taking the trash out and mowing. I didn't get paid anything more than having 'meaningful things' added to my life. I became task oriented and have stayed that way. The other value Mom shared was helping others in need.


She always baked on Monday's for the week, making an extra loaf of bread. She had me hop in the car, knock on the door of a needy neighbor, Land race back to the car before the door opened. Doing service anonymously was an important part of the game Dad, Edmund Arlo Richardson is stuck out under the car, banging away at a brake lining or cursing while banging his head and changing the oil.


Ed, that's my oldest brother, four years older than me, isn't around much, on purpose. He's off working at odd jobs to keep away from Dad. Paul, two years older, learned the lesson early on. When Dad's not working one of his two jobs to support the family, Paul is shooting basketball hoops with the Scow brothers. When Dad is home, Paul is at Mrs. Shuster's mowing doggy poo grass, or cleaning her house. That'll be my first job when I'm old enough and Paul picks up other things to do.


Me? Being too young to escape home, when Dad has one of his hair trigger 'get mad' attacks, I hide out either in the top of the garage or in the bomb shelter. That's what we brothers call the basement. When dad isn't on a rampage, we're scaring each other hiding out in the fruit cellar at the bottom of the stairs and jumping out yelling "Boo" at anyone foolish enough to walk by.


No, I didn't always live here. We moved here from an abandoned farm in Granger, Utah, that dad fixed up. I don't remember much happening there. I walked around in diapers, repeating my catch phrase "Bobba turn", sucking my thumb and holding my pink security blanket. That's all you're going to see there. Back to our home in Salt Lake City. That's where the action is.


The first day we moved there, I raced around to our big backyard searching for the swing set that wasn't there. It was still in my Dad's mind. A year later and two tall telephone poles rose from the ground with a sandbox between them, Four snake-like chains slid down from them with two wooden seats at the end. Next to them was a swinging bar and a thick dangling rope you could climb high enough to touch the sky and catch a cloud, well almost.


There's Julie, sitting on a blanket dressing dolls with her friends. Bonnie is in the house practicing piano. She starts that at sixish in the morning, worse than an alarm clock to wake up too. Little Nancy doesn't come along until later. She's a surprise baby. I'm the first one planned, Mom says. Mom takes the girls to see 'The Sugar Plum Fairy' during Christmas break. Nancy zero's in on a flute player and that becomes her professional aspiration and life for ever after. If you can find a career you fall in love with, much of life's battle is over. Ask Nancy.


Taking time to learn to be invisible whenever there is any stress, means I don't feel comfortable around people. At least not most of the ones my age or older. When it's dark of a summer evening, I gather all the littler kids on the bloc around me to play kick-the-can under the bright street light. Most other times, connections aren't just important, they are vital for everyone, Thought I'd add a few tidbits of what I've discovered along the way.


While family came first, these young neighborhood friends were almost equally important to me. But nothing could replace the satisfaction of doing things like taking Julie on a cat walk to find a witches den (that means following our black cat named Midnight as he explores the evening neighborhood, without either of us getting caught).


So, now you've seen my crew. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Dad's a weatherman, the guy behind the scenes who studies weather maps and factors determining forecasts. He's located at the Salt Lake City airport. He has a side job fixing broken paper copy machines, I think.


Now on to our church scene, that and extended family connections are the most important part of my parents lives, and thus mine.


We are Mormons, as are most of those living around us. Our history goes back to Colonia Dias, in Old Mexico, a colony set up by Brigham Young when pologymy was outlawed in the Utah territory. My grandfather was the first child born there, in a covered wagon, and spent his first year of life living in one. Our lineage goes back to the pilgrims with the three brothers Richardson's, but enough of that. You wanted to see my world.


Church means three hour Sunday's, Mutual on Wednesday nights, temple sessions for my parents, church farm volunteer work, meetings at home with 'Home Teachers', my mom's relief society assignments and impromptu helping those locally in need, and my Dad's Scouting stuff. I think that covers it, but I'm probably missing something. The point is, church is not just a Sunday thing, it's a lifestyle throughout the week.


Evenings always end in kneeling for a family prayer. Mom and Dad aren't involved in social invites between friends or in clubs. Church activities cover that as well, with food fund raisers and such. I don't know how many times I sat on the church gym floor surrounded by good smells while I watched 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' on a sixteen millimeter film projector the church owned. That is still a nostalgic favorite.


I earn 100 percent attendance records while mentally numbing out during church. One vibrant exception to point out is walking on eggshells living with Dad. In my middle youth years, I happened to catch the flu and (happily) stayed home from school. Come Sunday, I have an assignment at church, am feeling better, and go.


Next thing I know, Dad is marching down the church aisle, jerks me up by the arm, and pulls me out to the car. I hadn't asked if it was all right to go beforehand with Dad. "What do you think you are doing? You are sick!" he steams, yanking the car into gear and heading back home, "Are you going to behave?"


I feel indignation rising in my chest, a very unfamiliar feeling. "Yes, SIr!" I almost shout." Dad's right hand swings out to slap me across the face so hard it starts a bloody nose. Oops. I've scored points. More on that technique later.


Back to staying home from school. I used the 'I feel sick' ploy as often as I could. It helped that during my first year of life, I turned blue when my intestinal chord needed fixing, compounded by having to take months off and stay in bed in my pre-teen years for a heart condition due to Rheumatic Fever.


When I had to attend classes, I numbed out, sitting silently as a shadow, outwardly behaving myself. In grade school, I had to deal with neighborhood bullies living the next block up, who liked to break chunks of ice over my head. If I didn't want to be late getting to school, that was a block I could not pass up. When I brought this up to my mom, she suggested maybe I could go a little faster and stop taking prized junk out of people's garbage cans on the way. Not an option.


My grades got so bad that I spent a summer with my grandfather Richardson, who had been a teacher at Brigham Young University and now rented out apartments he'd added to his home in Provo. That way I wasn't held back a grade. That was junior high. Thanks, grandad.


By high school my grades nosedived so badly that I sobbed uncontrollably in Boy's Glee the last day of class. "How can you fail Boy's Glee? You don't even have to sing good." It was a pansy class used to keep poor students like me graduating. I'd missed too many classes being 'sick'.


Dad happened to be in Nevada for two weeks of work as the new state of Utah Climitologist. He would kill me when he saw my report card. That, and some personal problems I wasn't handling had me desperate.


"Do you want this?" It was Ed, handing me a short 22 caliber bullet for a nicknack. He'd had to pry it out of our .22 rifle he'd gone rabbit hunting with. "Sure. Thanks." Salvation. I could save dad the trouble of killing me if I did it myself. Church wise, suicide meant going to outer darkness, a blessing in my case, since nobody would be there to bother me. The perfect way to eternally numb out.


The day before Dad came back, I lay on my bed with the rifle pointed under my chin, armed and ready. I sipped at a measuring cup I'd put a home mixture of poison in, just in case the bullet only made me a mindless handicap for the family to take care of. When I heard someone coming downstairs, I pulled the trigger.


Things didn't happen as expected. I gargled blood, spitting it out as fast as I could, and yelled, "Get Mom." I'd given myself a frontal lobotomy. The poison I'd made wasn't, it just hurt my kidneys a tad. I spent the next nine months at the State Mental Hospital, finished high school there, and was sent to the two year college in far away Cedar City, to get away from the stress of living at home.


You may not believe this, but two of my college teachers were having affairs. I opened an office door late at night to deposit a term paper and found a secretary hastily adjusting her garters at her desk. "Haven't seen those since forever", I said blandly, offering her my term paper.


The other incident was taking a one on one piano and music composition class with a female teacher who never showed up until the last day we were supposed to meet. "I'll give you an A if you agree to let this pass?" O.K. by me.


My Spanish teacher offered A's to all students who didn't want to take a second year course. Nice. So my first year of college I became a straight A student for keeping my silence. Eas enough. The next year we became a four year college. I made it through the four years, working as a college janitor, and at Bryce Canyon National Park, part of a state sponsored rehabilitation offering.


Bryce leads us to my first marital bliss. Phyllis Johnson was a lithesome brown eyed, brown haired girl of eighteen. Everyone else settling in at Bryce was pairing up. This was her first year away from home, what to do. There was I, looking lost and trying unsuccessfully to blend in.


She, a straight A scholarship student going to Brown University when the summer was over, wondered what it would be like to take me on as her first real boyfriend. Half way through the summer, Jesse Waddoups, another lost type I'd once befriended, wanted to introduce me to his new bride during their honeymoon at Bryce.


The sound of their playing kissy face watching the sunset while walking the Rim trail disgusted me. I'd invited Phyllis along. "Gotta' go," I said to the lip smacking couple. I decided I wanted to let Phyliss know what a real romantic kiss could feel like. When we got to the stairs of the women's dorm, I took her in my arms and gently brushed our lips together. "Night."


Phyllis was surprised. She hadn't felt a thing. As she started up the stairs, she suddenly felt faint. Her eyes blurred. She had to hold onto the bannister to keep from falling. "Wow." She thought to herself.


When she woke up in bed, she had a fever. Come to find out, the nurse told her she had a bad case of the flu. It hadn't been the kiss after all. End of romance. Life lesson? Funny things happen. Laugh at them. Nope. She did attend Brown that fall. I called long distance romancing with every spare bit of change I found. Nine months later she agreed to marry the nice Mormon boy her parents liked. They were relieved. Phyllis had half way made plans to go to Israel and was interested in the Jewish faith, with its choice of laws instead of a prophet heading the church.


We got married in the temple, the last day Phyllis ever went. Separating the men and women while pushing the patriarchal order wasn't her style. I went inactive. We bought a house in a bug ridden area in Lehi, near Utah Lake and settled in making a life together. Her, a stay home mom specializing in making cheap spaggiti, me, first an aide, then fast tract technician, then fast tract again psychologist at the American Fork Training School.


I loved the work, was good, more than good. I'd found what Nancy had discovered with her flute. By the time Phyllis and I had our allotted two girl kids (Sarah and Keziah) I was standing to receive the Employee of the Year award with dignitaries and police, one of whom handed over divorce papers from Phyllis. Things had gone south between us. We'd gotten married too young, she said.


Next up to bat, is Linda Spahr, a co-worker at the Training school. I asked her friend out on a date and Linda asked if she could go along. The friend caved. Linda and I started seeing each other, playing our guitars and singing, doing simple no hassle stuff. When she gave me a handmade afghan for Christmas, I was sold. This was a homemaker I could live with.


When I proposed, I pointed out she would still need to work. I was paying child support and couldn't offer her the lifestyle she was used to on my salary alone. She agreed readily and we married. Trouble was, over time and much marriage counseling, I found her emotional flareups made it impossible to work on our homelife together. Her medication changes didn't stabilize her, nor did individual or couple counseling.


Our adopted baby son had grown into a juvenile delinquent neither of us could control. Our other two kids, Emily and Matt, were finding it rough waters at home as well. We separated.


I enjoyed living in my pickup. For nine months I worked, now in middle management at TURN community services group homes and apartment programs for the retarded. One positive thing Linda and I had done was write a grant so successful that four programs were offered TURN instead of the one we applied for. Oh, Linda and I hadn't been able to write it together. I had us take turns working on writing out the grant and reviewing each other's additions. Hey, it worked.


We'd taken to doing weekend sub fill'ins at one of the TURN group homes as our night out. Now, we both worked for TURN, me managing the contracts and Linda the official working group home parent whom I helped out. It was an arrangement that kept us going together for a couple more years. Linda needed a change. She became a foster home for men with developmental disabilities. Without the outside support, life at home deteriorated. We divorced.


Emily and Matt lived with Linda, spent weekends with me. I no longer lived in my pickup. I'd been given consent by the owner and work, to live in the warehouse where my office was. I was no longer in mid management. I'd fallen for my second love, computers, and made a new job by buying, installing, and supporting them for TURN state wide. On a personal level, I was fascinated by a machine that could be anything you made it. It became a music synthesizer that not only played a whole orchestra of instruments but recorded the music you made online, made having to buy art supplies needless, and opened up social interaction world wide.


Thus enters the third and final chapter in my married life. Yahoo, had free online chat rooms people roamed in and out of, playing music, matching up, and sharing whatever came to mind, a much less stressful way of interacting for me. Meet Diana Stanford, CNA.


"I can't afford being in a relationship. We can only be friends." I made it a point to write, as soon as it became apparent we enjoyed chatting together. Diana wanted phone calls to help her drive home at night from twelve hour work shifts. I used the time to vent my emotional frustration at having to deal with Em and Matt's problems via long distance with Linda.


We became an online twosome. Five years later I helped Diana move to Utah. She'd said it was her time to stop taking care of others, like her grandkids, and find time to be herself. I helped.


We found out living together worked better than supporting two apartments. A couple of years later, we found enough money ror me to get a divorce and marry her, "So that my mother won't have to roll in her grave," Diana joked.


I'd never met a woman so compatible, loving, easy to live with, who I was able to work through whatever came up with before it became a problem. I was more than in love. I found the love of my life.


If anything, we were too compatible. We were enough to fill every other need. Where Diana had a good support group of friends when she was single, we relied on social, spiritual, mental, and physical needs to be met together.


Diana encouraged my hobbies, gardening, writing, sketching, and playing musical instruments. She shared my interest in landscape photography. We checked out a variety of churches without finding one that interested her, like she'd had when living in Louisiana. We found solace in nature and doing good deeds for others.


Twenty years, and now she is gone. Major health problems we dealt with along the way. No biggie, we could do anything together and didn't sweat the small stuff. Sharing a love life like that is the most fulfilling experience there is. Tips on how to make one?


I treated Diana like the most important person in my life, because she was. Knowing I might forget if I didn't do something she asked for, I always stopped what I was doing to do it. Every have anyone do that for you? Startled her, to say the least. Made her feel guilty about asking of the cuff things. Didn't stop her from asking when she thought something needed to be done.


Now, not everyone is in a position to be able to do that. Agreeing and keeping a time when a task will be done, can be. Writing a to-do list down and checking it off with your soulmate is a way of showing how much love means. In fact, I didn't wait to be asked, once I knew what she appreciated..


You probably wonder about the adventures I've had along the way, how the kids and grandkids turned out, what fires flared up and had to be extinguished, but you'll have enough of those along the way without visiting mine for more.