Living Out Loud: My life in stories

By Jane Sweeney

Jane Sweeney tells her life story with humor and candor. She grew up in the fifties in what Johnny Carson called "beautiful downtown Burbank." Her parents were alcoholics, whose fights taught her never to argue with someone - it gets ugly. To protect herself she hid under the bed with their cat, Skunky, beginning her life long love of animals.

She tells of riding around and listening to the Beach Boys in her husband -to- be's '56 Chevy. Gas was 29 cents a gallon.

Her mother's death in 1980, when Jane was a 34 year old mom of three was a turning point. She became a volunteer in hospice, a new movement in the U.S. Jane went on to become a hospice director, and returned to school to get her Master's degree in Counseling Psychology, where she focused her studies on grief and loss. Jane's career in hospice spanned the AIDS epidemic, and she learned her greatest lessons in grief and loss from renowned psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

Following her retirement she focused her attention on adapting to life in the country. She and husband Tom moved to the smallest county in California, Alpine, population 1100. She started rescuing animals - horses, cats and dogs. Great adventures ensued.

Jane tells a story of following your passions wherever they lead you. In Living out Loud she advises us to live with authenticity and to take the road less travelled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098306700

Book preview

Copyright 2020

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-1-09830-669-4 (softcover)

ISBN 978-1-09830-670-0 (eBook)

Dedicated to my forever friend,

Trish

Thank you for always being there!

Contents

Author Biography

Prologue

Acknowledgments

Beautiful Downtown Burbank

Home of the Rough Riders

Camp Fire Friends

Amazing Mom

Ethyl and Frank

Twenty-six Miles and a Hurricane

Dr. Gallagher

My Parents’ Relationship

Yellow Jacket Buzz

Crazy Over Horses

Miss Fortune and a TV Star

Griffith J. Griffith and the Park

Test Model Dummies at Disneyland

Tom Sweeney

Wedding to Remember

Moving On

B of A

The Sweeneys move to Tujunga

Dear John

Tim Makes an Entrance

Erin Kathleen

Heather Ann

Toddler Town

A Firedog

Tujunga Friends

United Methodist Cooperative Nursery School

Snickerdoodles (there’s no Snickers in ‘em)

Break a Leg, Hip (or tooth)

Freestyle a Lifestyle

Mom’s Cancer Battle

The End and A Beginning

Hospice

On a Scale of One to Ten…

Hospice Volunteer

Florence and Bill

Grad School and Therapy

Nordic Home Care

Return to Hospice

Hospice for Profit

Home Town Hospice

A Wonderful Wedding

Fiona the Wonder Dog

Hello Mrs. Thatcher

The Park Nazi

Hire that Dog!

Stay Out of my Yard

The Big Move

Nick Builds a House and Shop

Killer

Francis’ Funeral

Our Holidays

A Wedding at The New House

The Grandkids Come

I Buy a Horse, or Two

The Murphy Man

You’re Going to Need a New Hip

Gibson Ailments

Emerald Isle

A Host of Canine Companions

Chloe Goes Blind

Traveller

Fred

Feline Friends

Fish in the Suburbs

We Build a Pond and Rescue Goldfish

Adventures on the Trail

Tom Supports the County

The Sweeneys Undertake

Mental Health Champions

Author Biography

Jane Sweeney was born in the first year of the baby boom, 1946. Her early recollections are of her mom, school and animals. She soon found her academic prowess was her greatest asset. Turbulent times lay ahead, not the least of which was her parents’ marriage.

Jane learned to cope with her parents’ alcoholic interactions by hiding under the bed with the cat, and reading a lot. She went on to be a hospice director prompted by her mother’s death when Jane was 34.

She learned to deal with life by telling her stories with humor. People would listen to you if what you were saying was funny and she needed to be heard.

Prologue

I’ve been writing this book off and on for about ten years, or more. Something funny or unusual would happen, and I would say That’s going in the book, because I thought a record should be kept. Then, as I got older, I began to think people might learn from my experiences.

I love to tell my stories, and sometimes people laughed, which just encouraged me. As you will see, I think all of us just want to be heard.

As I went along I realized I gave a lot more space to animal stories and hospice, but those things are important to me. It is not that other things are not, but I was trying to respect people’s privacy, and animals can’t talk back, and my hospice patients are all dead.

My goal was to tell my story, and in the process make you laugh and perhaps say, Hey, I didn’t know that. I also wanted you to feel validated when you heard the wacky stuff I’ve done.

I am

Here

To

Live

Out

Loud

—Emile Zola

Acknowledgments

Now I understand why authors thank so many people! I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

My wonderful family and friends who gave me most of the stories. Erin and Ron Dobyns who helped me use my Macintosh when everyone else used PC’s. Pat Barclay was a big help in that area, too, and saved me more times than I can tell! Karen Dustman, whose help and support were invaluable, through her book on memoir writing. Clint Malarchuk, who inspired me to keep writing even when he didn’t know it.

My husband Tom, who kept saying, You can do this.

My Mom, who had such faith in me.

. . . and coffee.

Beautiful Downtown Burbank

If you are old enough, you may remember Johnny Carson on the Tonight show saying, We’re coming to you from beautiful downtown Burbank! I was born there, in 1946, the first year of the baby boom, at St. Joseph’s hospital, located between NBC and the Disney Studios. The well starched Sisters of Providence actually ran the hospital then! Now it is a huge conglomerate. When I was about five, Walt tried to buy enough land to build Disneyland in Burbank, adjoining beautiful Griffith Park, but the city fathers nixed that idea. Might have helped the tax base.

My parents were in the process of moving from Temple City to Burbank, my mother having been told she probably wouldn’t be able to have any more children after the birth of my sister Paulette, six and a half years earlier. My father was excluded from the draft because he provided an essential service; he delivered Arrowhead and Puritas water to military bases. My uncle was drafted because he delivered Lucky Lager beer, a more essential service to some.

So, with the stress of the move, and her relationship with my father resembling that of two cats in a bag, mom didn’t realize I wasn’t just stress till six months had passed. I think mom was pretty happy with a girl, but my father later lamented that "even the goddamned cat was a female!

I am nine years old in front of the house on Catalina street.

I was to be the last of the litter, and I’m not sure my father ever got over his disappointment at not having a son. He would give me footballs for my birthdays, when he remembered them, and point out how I ran, threw and caught a ball like a girl! I make light of it now, but it was actually a painful reminder of what he really wanted; a boy to carry on his name, and prove his manhood.

Our little bungalow on Catalina Street was a cozy, brick fronted cottage, the walls paneled in knotty pine. The contractor, Ed Vettel lived in it while he built the much larger manse on the corner, where he lived with his wife Hazel, and their son, Donnie. The Vettels were memorable because Ed’s right leg was markedly shorter than the other, from polio I believe, for which he had a four inch lift giving him the gait of a drunken sailor. They had a darling black cocker spaniel named Pedro, whose greatest fear was loud noises; cars back firing, thunder and fireworks. Hazel had only to fire a starter’s pistol she kept at the ready if he escaped their yard, and Pedey would beat feet for home, his long ears flying. This was the beginning of my lifelong love of animals. Between Pedey and our cat Skunky, my companion under the bed when my parents fought, I learned to appreciate the unconditional love animals can provide. Horses were to teach me that as well.

My older sister, the aforementioned Polly, who later told me she thought of me as her baby, and I shared a bedroom with a comfy seat under the bay window. The window was composed of six inch beveled panes with wooden stiles between them. Mom made a sea green corduroy pad for it. I loved to snuggle up there and read. The window seat was hinged for storage, and inside the space was a small safe in the wall! Not the high security model, it had a latch but no lock. I don’t think my parents even knew it was there. I would steal nine cents from my sister’s change basket, stow it in the safe to buy ice cream cones when the Good Humor truck came by.

Our bedroom had been the front room or living room before the attached garage was converted to the living room, so it was good sized for a bedroom. The only problem was – no closet! We used the coat closet which was just outside our room for our clothes, mostly dresses, since girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school then. The closet was directly behind the large floor heater with a waffle style grid on top of it. You had to straddle it if it was running while you picked your clothes, and hope you didn’t slip and burn your feet, which my precious daughter Erin did when she was about two years old! Her poor feet looked just like we’d cooked them for breakfast.

My favorite books for the window seat were the Wizard of Oz books by L. (for Lyman) Frank Baum. I especially liked them because they were great, heavy volumes with scary pen and ink illustrations by W.W. Denslow (picture the Wicked Witch of the West), and there was a bunch of them – 14 in all. After about ten, the stories got a little redundant, even for a nine year old. My mother instilled in me a love of reading, and our local library. A library is like a bank that gives out free money, but you have to give it back when you’re done with it, and NO interest.

I couldn’t believe it when I found out years later that the Oz books were political allegories. I think sometimes they make that stuff up. You know, a political science grad student needs a topic for his/her Master’s thesis and the next thing you know the Great Oz is Grover Cleveland! But, a lot of grad students and their professors all seemed to agree on that. They also concluded that the yellow brick road was the gold standard which had just been abandoned, (remember that card in Monopoly?) Dorothy represented the hapless middle class being spun around financially and politically. The Tin Man represented industry, the Scarecrow agriculture, and the Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryan, known to just roar, but not say much. Baum wrote the Wizard of Oz (oz. being the abbreviation for an ounce of gold or silver) in1900, a very tumultuous time, and to his credit, he was a great supporter of women’s suffrage.

When I got a little older, the Black Stallion series was my passion, and any book by Marguerite Henry, like Born to Trot or Black Gold. All these books had horses as the main character, and were they noble! They would stop and wait if their rider fell off or swim out and pick them up if they were drowning. How could you not love ‘em?

I thought the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were boring, but Kathy Cox and I used to play girl detectives, uncovering nefarious schemes by the school janitors, Mr. Long, who was five foot two, and Mr. Short, approximately six feet tall. I am not making this up! They had to be hired for their names. We would leave notes behind the paper towel dispensers which were emblazoned with Rub, Don’t Blot. Our imaginatively coded messages read, Mr. S. parked his car behind the playground. Meet me by the tether ball pole.

Home of the Rough Riders

My education began in Ms. Wilson’s kindergarten class at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary school, home of the Rough Riders. I can see myself sitting cross-legged on the rug, in a plaid cotton dress. Mrs. Wilson was at the piano in front of the class, and I was most impressed because she could play the song and sing the words without looking at her hands! My favorite song was My Country Tisathee. I liked it best when I was the flag bearer, standing proudly, flag protruding from my navel. There were 48 stars because it was 1951, and Alaska and Hawaii weren’t in the union yet.

When you were a kid did you think your teacher lived at the school? I did. To me the institution that was my elementary school was all encompassing, sort of like a convent. When I saw Ms. Wilson driving through our little subdivision of Magnolia Park in her little red Thunderbird with the porthole windows, I was stunned! It was akin to seeing a nun driving a race car! Did she steal it? On another occasion the Mother Superior drove me home. More about that later.

I can remember every teacher I had at that wonderful old school, many of whom, like the janitors, had unusual names. Miss Gottlieb was my first grade teacher. She had beautiful long, black hair, pulled up behind her ear a la Rita Hayworth. She called my mother one day near the end of the school year, and said she thought they would have to put me in advanced first first grade instead of second. (I guess a lot of kids were flunking first grade, and they didn’t want to make them feel bad.) My mom said, That’s ridiculous! Get the second grade reader, she can read you the whole thing! Fortunately, she did, and I did, so I went to second grade. Mom asked me why I wasn’t doing the work, and I replied, It’s boring. I was to have a kid like that too.

The things I remember about Miss Danis, my second grade teacher, was she was very tall, and she brought apple butter for us to try. I thought that was very cool, because it looked like baby poop, but tasted pretty good.

Third grade was memorable, because Mary Hocking was my teacher and Tweed Manley stabbed me in the back with a pencil. He said it was an accident. I still have a mark from the lead! Mrs. Hocking was a stout, sarcastic woman, whose job it was to teach us handwriting, also called cursive. We practiced constantly and I remember she told me to close up my lower case b’s because they looed like l’s. I was mortified. Looking back, in the big scheme of things, I guess that’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened, but I knew by this time that my greatest gift was my academic prowess, and whenever it was criticized, I died inside. I also remember that when the boys chased us into the bathroom, Mrs. Hocking tied giant crepe paper bows on their heads and sashes around their waists and made them use the girls’ bathroom! I don’t think you could do that today! Tweed was one of those boys, and poor thing, he looked like a Tweed. Giant cowlick, teeth piling in on top of each other, and he wore sweater vests! What were his parents thinking? Later when I was a Camp Counselor, I became good friends with Mrs. Hocking’s daughter, Ann, and when Mary died, Tom was one of her pallbearers.

Fourth grade was Mary Plogue, a tiny woman with dishwater blond hair. Incredibly sweet, she read to us every afternoon from Betty MacDonald’s Mrs. Pigglewiggle books. We sat in rapt attention to learn how the little old lady in the upside down house cured kids from tattle tales to crybabies. The remedies were administered from mysterious bottles, and tasted really good. Apparently the recipe died with her. I read these gems to my kids and we all enjoyed them while we were in the motorhome on our marathon trips around the U.S. and Canada. Look out the window for God’s sake, it’s the Grand Canyon, Tom would yell. But we’re reading Mrs. Pigglewiggle’s Farm! came their response. These wonderful books were written by the beloved Betty MacDonald, who also wrote The Egg and I, and The Plague and I, as well as Onions in the Stew. The Egg and I was made into a movie starring Claudette Colbert, and featured Ma and Pa Kettle, whom many remember.

Fifth grade was Mrs. Polkinghorn. She had flaming red, Bozo the clown hair, and constantly wore the same pink blouse. Even we fifth graders knew it wasn’t a good combination.

Sixth grade was the coup de grace – Miss Horn. She was a single