My Extended Vacation from US Steel

In early June of ‘75, I took 3 of my 5 weeks of extended vacation (my first and only). We decided to take a trip out west. Lynn was interested in Montana. So, that’s the way we went, visiting Bismark, then going south through Yellowstone and Colorado. We spent my birthday camped out at Estes Park. I woke up early, needing to go to the campground toilet. I came out of our tent into a foot of new-fallen snow. While we were there, we also spent an evening at Bear Lake. The stars were incredible. then we continued our journey down through Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods, and continued south into the Texas panhandle where we turned east, skirting the tumbleweeds, then going through Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, back to Oberlin.

That took two weeks, and I spent the third working on and around the house and mowing… at least half of the 10 acres the house sat on. For the summer, I had to mow some most days after work. And by the time I was finished, I had to start again. We painted the house, too, primer and finish coat. That actually took the whole summer to finish. I did all the ladder work, upper level painting. We painted it a colonial blue with white trim

Guy, his wife, Nancy, and their baby, Brittany, stayed with us for a couple of weeks after our return. They found a place in Lakewood and moved out sooner than I expected. Later, after Lynn and I had split up, Guy informed me that they only found the Lakewood house so quickly because Lynn told them that if they wouldn’t go to ‘twig meetings’ and/or join the Way, they would have to leave. She would not have ‘non-believers’ living in her home, even temporarily. That would never have worked as Nancy was a practicing Catholic, and Guy was Agnostic, if not Atheist. Lynn’s proselytizing methods were never going to work on them. She never discussed it with me and led me to believe that Guy and his family were just anxious to have their own place. While it’s true they wanted their own place, that was not the reason they left. She intentionally lied to me… one of many as she became more and more indoctrinated into that cult, in which her ends justified her means, sadly.

To be Continued

–LE