The new house had three bedrooms. John and Eunice took the front one with Bill in the middle and the two girls in the back one. John's new friend, Don McDougal, who he met at the Wonder Bur Tavern in Grants Pass and invited home for dinner, had been surfing the living room couch for a number of months. More about Don later. Eunice was the glue holding everything together and she had an apparently inexhaustible reservoir of tolerance for difficult circumstances.
On a sunny summer afternoon a massive addition to that reservoir occurred. John's mother, Ella Maude, had lived with John's family in La Grande until his accident on the railroad that sent him to Portland. Then she was sent to live in Baker, Oregon with her older son, Bill Beckwith.
The big Buick came roaring into the driveway, much too fast. A blast of the horn brought everybody in the house out the front door to see the driver, John's older half-brother Bill Beckwith, opening the trunk of his car and removing a huge suitcase which he placed next to the porch. Without a word he opened the Buick's passenger-side door to escort Ella Maude Landers, John's and Bill's 87-year-old mother, to join the family members. He came face-to-face with John and said, "I'm bringing her back, John. I can't take her anymore." Then he returned to the Buick and did a power back-out of the driveway and a gravel throwing exit onto the Redwood Highway as he headed back to Baker, Oregon.
The only one in the gobstruck group left standing outside the open door to the house who seemed completely at ease with the situation was Ella Maude. There was no hugging. Adding Ella Maude to
the family dynamic was like putting a dollop of Ex-Lax into an omelette but that wouldn't become apparent until later.
(To be continued)
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