Stella in Port Orford, Oregon
Stella's father moves the family to Oregon to become a machinist at a saw mill. Eventually, he builds his own saw mill. They live up the Sixes River near Port Orford. The house has no running water and they use an outhouse.
Stella loves the move National Velvet. She loves the horse and Elizabeth Taylor. She gets a horse of her own. They let him run loose along the river with the other horses in the neighborhood.
Stella tries smoking with her cousin when she's 14 years old. This is the cousin.
What a dump!
Stella's mother gets tired of the outhouse situation and they move into town. The horse now lives in the back yard but Stella takes him to run on the Port Orford beaches while she's still in high school.
Her sister gets married to a veteran of World War II. Those two eventually move to Alaska and start a record distribution company selling record albums to Alaskans in remote locations. One day they will send lots of records back to Stella and Levi. Stella is her sister's Maid of Honor.
Stella is popular in high school. She takes piano and dance classes. Her parents dream she will be a famous pianist.
She begins to date Neil, the son of her music teacher, and performs in recitals and dance programs. They make the local newspaper.
Judy Garland Interlude
Stella thinks she has the talent to make it happen. She is valedictorian of her senior class of 20 (14 boys) and is homecoming queen.
Levi in Keems Canyon, Arizona
Levi's father is transferred from San Carlos to Keems Canyon where he's again a ranger for the Hopi Reservation Indian Agency. Soon he becomes Superintendent there.
Levi becomes friends with the other agency kids. He spends Hopi holidays on First Mesa and becomes best friends with his babysitter's son Danny. His babysitter will one day make and sell Hopi pots.
Danny and Levi make home-made batteries and ride the burros wandering the canyon. The burros try to run under tress to knock them off. Levi also loves his dog Rusty who chases cars.
Levi joins the scouts.
He goes to school (finally).
Many dignitaries visit Hopi and Levi's parents entertain their visitors. But Levi is shy and never enjoys these dinners or social events.
He will remember this as the best time of his childhood: exploring the canyons.
The Poem
We are mythologies of horse-star-mesa-mine,
what the movies say, what the moving say,
the incantations of mechanics over small rocks,
riders ministering to the burrows. We were boys
with bow and arrows, pick and shovel,
cowboys-Indians-dancers-jockeys.
We were the crest of myth, searchlight promise
behind the curtain, behind the blind,
around the cove. We were the bare feet
of the girl at the start of the trail.
Only Levi can see 500 miles.
Soon his family moves to Sells, Arizona, near the Tohono O'odham reservation and then eventually to the Stewart Indian School where Levi's father will be Superintendent and Levi will go to high school in Carson City, Nevada.
Levi drives the bus for Stewart Indian School. He also runs track and plays football and spends his summers in Solano, New Mexico, where his grandfather is grooming him to be a cattle rancher.
Levi learns all about cows and running a ranch. His grandfather even builds him a little house and Levi carves his name on an inside wall. He loves his grandfather and his summers in New Mexico but he is drawn away from the ranch. He doesn't know what he wants to do.
A great big fat flop!
He goes to college for a semester in Tucson and then joins the U.S. Coast Guard.
