Bowed to the Dragon:: A Generational Search for Meaning

By Kate Shannon

Bowed to the Dragon sheds light on the tapestry of stories, beliefs and addictions passed down through five generations of women. These universal themes go far back in history, their origins lost in time.

Kate Shannon researched the life of her grandmother, Clara Adelle Morris, and wrote a true account of a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathleen Shannon
• Release date: Mar 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781648733857

Kate Shannon

After dropping out of school in the eighth grade, and soon having a family of her own, Kate Shannon developed a lifelong interest in people and the cause of human suffering, including her own. Ms. Shannon attended Golden West College and the University of California, Irvine, concentrating on comparative cultures, including Indigenous traditions of Mexico. The author studied under Andreas Segura Granados in Mexico City and received an M.A. in Counseling from Northern Arizona University.Holding several counseling licenses, Kate worked many years in private practice and public mental health in both Arizona and California. She found her decade of work with the military in various states and countries prior to her retirement most satisfying. Among other writings, she published articles on the dangers of methadone for pain management. Kate attended the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and studied philosophical counseling in the Noetic Society with Dr. Pierre Grimes, as well as a summer with Dr. Herbert Otto at The Health Optimizing Institute, San Diego State.In a 1977 letter of recommendation from Dr. Grimes, he describes the author: "Kate studied Plato and learned to dialogue, studied Zen and practiced it with Zen Masters, went into psychology and sought analysts with whom she could work. This is her distinctive mark: she accepts mature challenges and seeks to integrate them into herself through her personal experience and dedication. While engaging in these pursuits, she raised her children and, I might say, she didn't let college interfere with her education and development."The author continues her exploration of the human condition.

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Bowed to the Dragon: A Generational Search for Meaning

All Rights Reserved. Copyright ©2022 Kate Shannon

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or any information storage retrieval system without written permission from publisher and copyright holder except with brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. Requests should be mailed to Kate Shannon, [e-mail].

Photos and clippings courtesy of Kate Shannon, except where otherwise noted. Illustration and photo research by J.A. Hopkins.

Cover photo: Book Brush

First Edition

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64873-314-7

Cover and Book Design: Book Brush and J.A. Hopkins

Editing: J.A. Hopkins, Mary Locke

This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over time. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated.

Dedication

In memory of Clara Adele Morris, my grandmother. Her writings and the people she knew offered a glimpse of her inner self.

But I found her most of all in the mines and mountains where she lived, loved and died.

It is entirely possible to verify for oneself that we are part of a caring and intelligible universe. 

Pierre Grimes, PhD

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Prologue

A Fork in the Road

Live with WolvesandLearn to Howl

1. A Cyanide Cocktail

A Legacy Passed Down

2. Elizabeth McGill Dalley

3. Mary Ann Mary Dalley

4. Moving and Mining

A Long Search for Meaning

5. Clara Adele Morris

The Lorraine Mae Handkerchief Mine: Late 1920s

6. The Beginning of the End

Felonious Manslaughter: 1940

Goodbye to the Dragon

7. My Parents

8. Early Memories

9. Marriage and Family

10. Comfort in Darkness

11. A Fresh Mistake

12. Parting the Veils

The Coldest Winter

13. The Night Parents Dread

14. The Long Way Home

Epilogue

15. The Magic of Life. Synchronicity.

Appendix

Jerry Sander’s Interview

People

Letters

Illustrations

Bibliograph

About the Author

List of Illustrations

Figure 1  Clara’s last note to her children.

Figure 2  View of the town with Caribou Hill in upper left.

Figure 3  Mary Ann Dalley, 14 years old.

Figure 4  Walter and Mary Wain on Catalina Island, California.

Figure 5  Primos Schoolhouse. 2nd row, center, Wilma and Wilbur, c. 1917.

Figure 6  Mary, Nell, Wilma, Wilbur and Lorraine c. 1916.

Figure 7  Millard Githens, c. 1919.

Figure 8 Clara, Lorraine, Wilma before girls leave Denver for LA.

Figure 9 Clara and Lorraine fishing, undated.

Figure 10  Clara waitressing at unknown location.

Figure 11  Clara and Paul Schram, Grand Canyon

Figure 12  Sandberg’s Summit Hotel in its heyday. SCV History.

Figure 13  Clara and Sally in the Mohave Desert.

Figure 14  Paul Schram and Clara in LA.

Figure 15  Birds eye view of Randsburg, 1934. Pomona Public Library.

Figure 16  Inside the Yellow Aster Saloon – Randsburg California, ca. 1900.

Figure 17  Brother Bud, Lorraine, Clara and Walter Wain, c. 1929.

Figure 18  Walter Wain and Clara, 1929.

Figure 19  Mrs. Worthington and Clara, Randsburg.

Figure 20  Bill Springer, Clara and fiddle player, c. 1934.

Figure 21  A view to Clara’s Pyramid.

Figure 22  Lorraine, Clara, Wilma and Brother, c. 1933.

Figure 23  Clara’s obituary, 1934.

Figure 24  Man loses life in Fist Battle

Figure 25  Wilma Louise Harris, c. 1928.

Figure 26  Wilma, Kate and Fred Shannon, c. 1941.

Figure 27  Fred Alexander Shannon, C. 1918.

Figure 28  Fred Shannon on train to LA, 1924.

Figure 29  Mom’s LA house, c. 1931.

Figure 30  Wilma and Brother, c. 1924.

Figure 31  April, her sister and brother, and me in Brother’s truck, c. 1950

Figure 32  My 1963 VW Bug close to the old town of Keyesville.

Figure 33  View of Keyesville in 1978.

Figure 34  The Cook Shack where Clara died.

Figure 35  Kate, Sheryl and Debra, 1996.

Figure 36  Margaret Ann Pomeroy Osborne.

Figure 37  Clara’s grandmother, Martha Dearing Harris, c. 1930.

Figure 38  Martha Dearing Harris, age 19.

Figure 39  William Walter Wain and his brother,  c.1880.

Figure 40  #K-172. Kemp, 1873, Caribou, Colo. 1870-1879.

Figure 41  #97722. Central City Opera House, Central City  c. 1880.

Figure 42  Concord Coach outside of Nederland Colorado, 1914.

Figure 43  Miner’s cabin Colorado, Caribou, CO, c.1890..

Figure 44  Mt. St. Gertrude's Academy, c. 1915. From the author’s collection.

Figure 45  Carnation (?) Park, Colorado, undated.

Figure 46  Dad’s cabin in Apple Valley.

Acknowledgments

I begin by thanking my daughters and grandchildren, who continue to love me through all my incarnations and who encouraged me to write this book. May they never say, I wish Grandma was here to tell the rest of the story. 

I’m grateful to my mother, who was my whole family—Mom, Dad and playmate—when I was young. Mom saved all of Clara’s writings and her family’s documents and photos. She introduced me to her beginnings in the Rocky Mountains.

Without the inspiration of Pierre Grimes, Ph.D. and his book, Philosophical Midwifery: A New Paradigm for Understanding Human Problems, I may never have started this book. My fortunate meeting with his insights and teachings of philosophical midwifery gave me the first glimpse of the Mind, and of the beauty of ancient Greek philosophy. This ongoing midwifery aided my understanding of the origin of my sufferings. Deprived of this lifetime of dialogue and his fresh questions to follow and seek my answers to, I would not have made it home, even after gaining the wisdom of enlightenment.

Dr. Grimes writes, We have been cheated. What we most want, we can't have. Caught between ignorance and wisdom, we remain blind, deaf and necessarily drunk.

My beta readers, Doran Hunter, MA and Waldo Noesta, editor and author of Birding in the Face of Terror, Mary Locke, retired columnist, copyeditor, and writer for In Recovery Magazine, and Gail Vail, beta reader extraordinaire, provided helpful feedback. Their valuable commentary, besides the kind help from M. M. Anderson and her brilliantly researched book, The Mining Camps: Salina & Summerville, helped me parse the history of my associated families and bring those ancestors to life.

Lacking the fortunate help of Janet A. Hopkins that auspicious November 1987 meeting a couple of weeks after my mother died and the interview that decided my fate, and again, at a second meeting in 2021 where I learned my friend was a writer and editor, the book would have lingered on my bucket list. Janet verified this story was good enough to put into print and shared her expertise in editing and publishing.

Finally, my gratitude to Clara, for scribing her thoughts, fears and hopes that allowed me to know my grandmother as few others did when she was alive. My life followed a similar course to hers in all but the ending.

Prologue

I bowed to the Dragon,

and sank into his lair.

Filled with hatred and resentment,

believing love to be desire.

High on an icy mountaintop,

frozen and alone,

I waited on the fringes,

gone forever from my home.

Bowed to the Dragon, Kate Shannon, 2005

A Fork in the Road

This manuscript casts light on the tapestry of stories, beliefs, and precedents passed through five generations of women. Repeated themes going far back in history, their origins lost in time.

With each generation, children transition from childhood to old age, sometimes taking harmful routes. Various cultures have helpful rituals for this passage, but in this modern American era, detaching teenagers leave their parents in their own ways. Some discover healthy options while others find courage in dangerous modes of proving adulthood, for example, excess alcohol or drug use, speed racing, or risky sports.

My inward journey to Know thyself began over 50 years ago and flourished with a philosopher and a group of people journeying the same path. In pursuing spiritual transformation, I explored dreams, dialogue, meditation, and reflection. I explored my past, my fears, anger and beliefs that blocked my personal growth, and learned to identify fear, hatred, and images of myself that caused me to be less than honest.

This book began with my investigation into the life and death of Clara Adelle Morris, my mysterious grandmother, who fascinated me from childhood. This is an authentic account of a unique woman who lived her life on the fringes of a bygone era.

Born in 1890, in the silver mining town of Caribou, high in the northwestern Colorado Rockies, Clara died in 1934 of cyanide poisoning under suspicious circumstances in the ghost town of Keyesville, California. Her sudden death left her family in disagreement. My dad, who disliked Clara, felt relieved, while guilt and grief tormented others, especially my mom.

Mom, Wilma Harris Shannon, eldest daughter and caregiver for her mom and younger sister, regretted not saving Clara from her premature demise. In fact, her life and death lay heavy on the minds of generations to follow.

Left with the secret of Clara’s death and only fleeting glimpses of her life, some positive and some negative, no one really knew the truth. My family, like many others, wanted their children to only hear the good about their relatives, though no one lives up to an idealized image. When crucial secrets are not revealed, the next generation replays similar scenarios, and the same problems continue.

I recreated Clara’s history from her writings—a diary, personal memories, and letters passed on to her daughters—as well as from the coroner’s report and interviews of individuals present at her death. These sources portray a woman, as deep and insightful as she was rugged and wild, composed in equal parts of gypsy, miner, musician, adventuress, mother, poet and mystic. Clara lived as her inner urges led, regardless of the demands placed on women of her time.

She traded mining secrets with prospectors roaming their beloved gulches and gullies in pursuit of riches, often finding little more than bread for their table. She explored mountains and deserts with her pick and her pan as she pursued the depths of her own soul.

Her first sense of the world came among the mountain men, prospectors, and hard rock miners. With limited formal education, her world view grew out of the tales she heard from bohemian artists, poets, and philosophers who gathered in the early twentieth century in the mountains of Colorado and California.

Forging a path of her own, Clara traveled west in the booming days of Southern California. While Los Angeles offered a stimulating environment with metaphysical societies and philosophical lectures, the compelling call of the wilderness and freedom kept her on the periphery of the population.

During the Great Depression, Clara resorted to a knowledge and way of life she knew well, mining. As the cities fed their unemployed thousands, hardy, adventurous, and desperate souls took to the hostile deserts and isolated mountains seeking gold and silver. As one cold, ragged refugee remarked, It’s not great, but it sure beats the breadlines. The mines and prospects for gold offered hope.

When the Depression gained momentum, mining camps and towns rejuvenated. Well-populated encampments in their hay days, such as Red Mountain and Randsburg, California, once again regained their status of sin cities. Booze, sex, and precious metals attracted many characters. Those with experience came plying their trade in revived gold, silver, and tungsten mines and mills. Some even grubstaked their own claims. Girls, homemakers, saloon keepers, merchants, entrepreneurs, and tradespeople joined an assortment of sometimes irreputable types with dubious histories to seek their fortunes.

In this atmosphere, the gypsy-poet Clara entered the final act of her play. A terrifying year concludes her struggle to leave the man who’d become her captor.

The Bakersfield coroner reported the suspicious circumstances of her death. Aspects of the scene suggested murder, or at least that someone helped Clara in her death wish. My mother went to the mortuary with my dad to identify her mother’s body and saw bruises on her body and legs. But the verdict of suicide, unchallenged by those closest to her, came in response to the lack of truthful witnesses. Mom signed the coroner’s report.

If Clara Adelle Morris were alive today, as I wished as a child, we might explore our lives together. Instead, I followed her footsteps through the mountains and read her most intimate thoughts and came to know her. I found a higher path to take through education, reflection, and the option she was not privy to, sobriety.

As Clara, I spent much of my life seeking more. Drawn in by risky activities and sometimes people, whose part in my life reflected the feelings, images, and doubts I had about myself. The outcomes were difficult and brought emotional pain. Knowing this spurred me to find answers and opened a new direction where, with understanding, I could choose another path.

Aspects of Clara’s history remain a mystery. A reflective woman in an age and subculture that closed its doors to even a thinking man, Clara lived independent of the gender and societal mores of the time. Her aspirations were far removed from despair and poverty, the milieu of her reality. Etched into the lives of her ancestors, these themes reach beyond her lifetime to children yet unborn.

I gathered information about my grandmother from Clara’s oldest daughter, my mother, whose belief in and love for Clara inspired my exploration and this publication. She held her mother in high esteem and ignored any sign of trouble. Only a hint of Clara’s problems emerged when Mom explained her mother’s reasons for leaving her children. Even the move to Los Angeles did not assuage the guilt Mom carried for failing to bring her mother home and away from Oren,forever reminding her of what could have been.

Lorraine Mae Harris, the youngest of Clara’s three children, held the opposite opinion of her mother. She grew up angry, living in a boarding school, in a foster home and with her sister for a while, and finally staying with her aunt and uncle in California.

Clara’s oldest son, Wilbur Wain Harris Brother, never spoke of her. They were close, and he lived through most of her varied lifestyles—from housewife in beautiful Boulder Canyon, to mining in the deserts of California. After Clara left Randsburg with Oren Lee, he isolated her from her family. Brother bore immense guilt for not protecting her from Oren. My uncle used alcohol to deal with his feelings, as he had learned to do.

While completing a draft of this book at 79 years of age, I came to understand why my mother saved Clara’s letters and notes, as well as her own observations and reminiscences of their conversations. Mom offered the best gifts—the family secrets—a way to discover the amazing and painful lives my ancestors lived. Secrets that offered a way to appreciate, recognize, evaluate and change what I can and recognize the characteristics that presented an ability to change.

I hope to share my path toward the light and to illuminate the sometimes dark and traumatic forks in the road. And to show a way out. First, by telling the story of an interesting woman. Then, by sharing with my children and others, my ongoing deliverance from familial archetypes: the punishing father, acquiescent but angry wife, the detached mother, the enabler, the addict, the dutiful child, the scapegoat, the invisible child, the comedian.

As my teacher, Pierre Grimes, repeated in classes and in workshops I attended from my late twenties to the present, With understanding, we can no longer repeat the same patterns.

Live with Wolves

and

Learn to Howl

I found comfort in the darkness,

while cursing at the gods.

Digging bitter claws into the earth,

and soaring high above the clouds.

I lived only for the moment,

and danced among the stars.

I kissed the sandy ocean waves,

racing wildlythrough the years.

Bowed to the Dragon, Kate Shannon, 2005

1

A Cyanide Cocktail

September 30, 1934, 8:50 PM

Clara barely heard herself cry out as she fought separation from her body. Cyanide burned in her belly. She’d wanted to die so many times before, but now, with death imminent, she found a strong desire to live.

The chaotic movement around and inside of her grew. Her breath heaved and labored as the hot cabin’s bedroom became unbearable. Oren’s face came in and out of view. She heard him yelling and then the muffled voices of Oren and his brother.

Outside the lace curtains and open window, a huge granite rock blocked air and light. Visions of her grown children in Los Angeles, and the mountains of her birth in Colorado crowded her mind.

She desperately wanted to live.

September 30, 1934, 9:30 PM

Bob Neilson’s truck sped into the doctor’s driveway. Bob parked and ran to pound on the door to rouse Doc Evans. Come right away, he shouted in quick breaths. A woman up at the old mine! She’s taken poison!

The doctor beckoned him into the wood frame house outside the small ranching town of Isabella. In the southernmost reaches of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the nearby Keyesville mine[1] lay all but abandoned for 40 years after the gold gave out.

Doc Evans, an overweight man in his mid-fifties, gathered his bag of medical tools and some medicine, pulled a jacket over his undershirt and placed a hat on his head. He asked Neilson about the men who lived up at the old mine. The people up there prospected for color in the rocks, but the doctor, like the other families ranching and farming in the Kern River Valley, considered those squatting at the derelict mine to be drifters.

Wait here, the doctor said at the garage next door where he kept his Model A Ford coupe. He woke up William A. Willie Rogers, the young mechanic, recently arrived from the Midwest. He’d got a job as a car mechanic and the owner had given him a mattress to sleep on in the garage. Doc Evans, who didn’t know the way to the mine, asked the young man to drive him. He also wanted a driver for security when he got there.

The mechanic followed him out of the garage wiping sleep from his eyes. Ya wants me to drive ya up ther?

The doctor nodded. We’ll follow Neilson here; he knows the way.

Rogers, thin and wiry with two missing front teeth, still had grease on his hands and rumpled clothes. He spoke with a dense Southern accent. Once in the car, Doc Evans smelled the sour odor of sweat mixed with a heavy scent of machine oil, and kept his window rolled down as they bumped and swerved up the eight-mile dirt road leading to Keyesville.

"Do you know any of the miners living in