Orchard Mesa

(entry for 10/23/24)

During the summer of 1953, we moved from Montrose, Colorado, to Grand Junction, so that I could attend the Adventist Junior Academy there. Public schools were never an option for us, as they were too ‘worldly,’ and since the Adventist Elementary in Montrose stopped at eighth grade, which I had just graduated from in May, there was really only one option, unless I was going to go to a boarding school. I was willing to try that, but my mom was not, so that was the end of that discussion. (I looked extremely young for my age, about nine or ten although I was actually thirteen, and she was sure I would be bullied, which indeed I would have been.)

My mom had been running a health food store featuring Adventist canned meatless products out of our back porch for a year or so, to help add some desperately needed income to our very poor family budget (we were always strapped in spite of my dad having two jobs at the time), and this moderately successful activity on her part inspired my dad to go ‘whole hog,’ so to speak. He purchased a real health food store in Grand Junction that had just come on the market, for nothing down and ridiculously low monthly payments. All that was needed was someplace to live.

Uh-huh. That was all that was needed. Yeah!

Grand Junction was growing fast, and housing was at a premium. Anything downtown, close to the store, was out of the question, so he started looking in outlying areas, where things were a bit cheaper. He also put other people to work to help with the search. He had already met with the pastor of the church we would be attending, and that gentleman (I use the term loosely, as he was not one) knew people, so pretty soon something was found.

It was south of town, on a small bluff south of the Colorado River, which we had to cross to get to the health food store. The address was 252 28½ Rd. You read that right. When Grand Junction was first laid out, the grid on Orchard Mesa was a pattern of quarter-mile-wide squares, and the roads that ran north and south were numbered with whole numbers, increasing by a value of one every square. (East -West Roads used Letters.) The primary north-south roads were 26 Rd., 27 Rd., 28 Rd., etc. The Mesa was almost entirely farms, with one farmhouse per square. However, as the population was exploding, it became necessary to turn those farms into housing tracts to accommodate the influx. (Uranium had been discovered in the surrounding hills, and mining of that commodity to support the atomic energy and weapons industry had attracted thousands of people.)

But putting homes onto the farmland meant that the roads were too far apart, so new roads were built exactly halfway between the old ones, and the new ones got half-numbers (and letters). We lived near the corner of B½ road and 28½ road. Sort of mind-boggling till we got used to it. The house had a one-car detached garage which had recently been converted into a tiny apartment, so we gave free rent to my Grandma and Aunt Eda, in return for them providing part-time free labor in the health food store, and all was well.

(The photo at the head of this post is much more recent, and the apartment [on the right] has been remodeled and given windows, of which there was only one tiny one in 1953, but free rent is free rent.)

It turned out that Orchard Mesa was no longer appropriately named The peach orchards had all moved to Palisades a half hour to the northeast. Here’s a picture of a Palisades peach orchard, with Mount Lincoln in the background.

 

If there had ever been any peach trees on Orchard Mesa, they were long gone. There were trees, but none of them grew peaches.

But the most memorable thing about the move, for me, had nothing to do with peach trees, or road names, or even with health foods.

It had to do with toilet paper! And a towel rack!

Uh-huh, you read that right!

One of the reasons we could afford the house, which was brand new, never lived in, was that it was cheap, and one of the reasons it was cheap was that it wasn’t quite finished. They had put a lot of work into the apartment conversion, but some other things had been neglected. Like a toilet paper holder in the one and only bathroom, and a total lack of a towel rack.

Since the bathroom was going to have to meet the needs of six people (there being no room for a bathroom in the apartment), and since four of those six people were adults, and since those adults all had strong opinions, there was a complete falling out about where to put the towel rack and the toilet paper holder. It’s rather hilarious now, looking back, but at the time it was very anxiety producing. Especially for me. I had been through this kind of situation before, with disagreements among the four adults, and it always got very tense, with a lot of grim faces and a lot of refraining at all costs from any anger, as anger was a sin. There was never yelling. There were never harsh words. Just a lot of subtle pushing and pulling and manipulating of each other and of things.

In this case the things that were getting manipulated were a towel rack and a toilet dispenser.

Now you would think that the question of where to put a toilet paper holder would be fairly obvious. You put it near the toilet, right? Problem solved.

If you think that problem got solved that easily, then you never met my family. For one thing, it took forever to settle even the most obvious details, as there were always four separate and contradictory opinions. And if those four separate opinions ever reached a partial consensus, it always turned out to be three against one. Three women against my dad. And he hated that. You could tell he was about to explode. Except that he couldn’t explode, because that would be to show anger, and anger was a sin, and sinning wasn’t allowed. Period. So I always got to feel all that pressure being held in check all around me, and it’s a wonder I didn’t get ulcers from it.

But to get back to the bathroom in question, my dad had gone to the hardware store and had bought a toilet paper holder and a towel rack. (There was space for only one of each, so that’s all he got.) His choices met with silent disapproval, but since we were poor and nobody wanted to buy the gas to go back and get the items exchanged, they were accepted, with ill grace, but accepted. But that was the extent of any approval. Where to put them became the burning question.

Now my dad’s tendency when confronted by a three-to-one minority position, was to just start doing the thing the way he wanted to do it. Silently, not a word spoken. Just do it, as some advertiser says.

Did that work? Are you kidding?

My dad took the tools and the purchases into the bathroom and shut the door. My mom went outside the house (at night, pitch black) and looked in through the window to see where he was drilling the holes for the towel rack. Then she came back into the house, opened the bathroom door, and told him he couldn’t put the towel rack there. It would hang over the toilet paper dispenser and make it harder to get the paper off the roll, so the towel rack had to go somewhere else.

“But I already drilled the holes.”

“You can fill those holes with putty and drill new ones.”

“What about if I raise it a little bit higher so it doesn’t interfere with the toilet paper?”

“Then I would have to stand up to reach the towel.”

“But . . .”

She went to get reinforcements.

The reinforcements arrived, and an ultimatum was issued, and my dad filled the holes in with putty and drilled new ones and put the towel rack where the women wanted it. They left in triumph. Then he put the toilet paper dispenser where he wanted it, about two inches from where my mom wanted it, gave me an evil grin, left the bathroom, put his tools away, and went to bed.

I resumed breathing.

*

copyright ©2024, LegendKeeper LLC

*

To see other entries in Len’s Memory Blog series, please click HERE.

To see entries in Len’s Music Blog, click HERE.