to get back at Mike and he didn’t even know it. I kept moving up
in the job pay scale and moving up in the caliber of men, or so I
thought. I married two whose line was, “Marry me and let me help
you with the boys.” One I really did love and respect, Cody. He
taught me everything a “man” should know. I took care of cows on
a ranch where we lived and raised row crops and cattle. It belonged
to his ex-brother-in-law, Jesse, who soon took a fancy to me. Cody
was 25 years my senior and Jesse, the boss, was a little younger. I
learned to ride horses, take care of them, pen cattle, and doctor
them as needed. We rodeoed on weekends; he was a judge and I
was a rodeo secretary. We also shod horses, made ropes for riding
the bulls, and worked as ranch hands, so we made a decent living.
Everything we did, we did together. We’d probably have stayed
together if he better understood my kids, or kids in general.
In 1976, we moved back to Shreveport, Louisiana, the town
that I really considered to be my home. He went back to the
welding and blacksmith shop he had worked at before. I wanted to
be a girl again and landed a job in a dermatology office with two
doctors and on-the-job training. It paid $500.00 a month, and two
and a half years later, it still only paid $550.00 a month. After
those two and a half years, I went next door to a gas station and
convenience store to work as manager making $1500.00 a month
with a $1000.00 bonus every three months if inventory stayed
good with little shortage and good sales. Wouldn’t you know it—
the District Supervisor, who was married just like I was, fell in
love with me. Then, the CEO of an oil company, Ron, came to
town for a visit, and he also fell in love with me. I soon visited him
in Tulsa. I was married and so was he, but that didn’t stop Ron
from offering me a luxury penthouse apartment, chauffeured limo,
an allowance and to not have to work. Boy, I had made it. How
come I don’t feel great? I did not drink hardly at all, I went to
church with my family, I took good care of our home; no fast food,
I cooked, did laundry, starched and ironed twenty-seven pairs of
jeans a week, shined cowboy boots and dress shoes—all until the
boys learned to do it. The one thing was that Ron never mentioned