The Road Not Taken
Usually my dreams from over night vanish the moment I open my eyes. (To all the people who have asked me if I dream up my stories, now you have a definitive answer—N-O!) But now one of those dreams has stayed on and has been knocking around inside my head like one of those old-song ear worms. This morning I decided that if I finally broke down and wrote about it, maybe it would go away, so here goes:
In the summer of 1968, my first husband, Jerry Janc, was offered a teaching contract at Sells on what was then the Papago Reservation. At the time I still had a position teaching English at Pueblo High School in Tucson, but I had started working toward a degree in library science. At the last minute, the librarian at Sells quit and I was offered the job on a provisional basis. Since there was school housing on offer, we drove out to have a look at what turned out to be a cluster of small bungalows just west of the school campus. We would later learn people often referred to it as “the Fishbowl” for obvious reasons—primarily zero privacy. One look was enough for me, and I told my husband there was no way in hell I was going to live there.