The Upheaval

When Ann Landers was asked, "What makes a successful marriage?" she replied, "When the rocks in her head fit the holes in his."

An apt description for the wife of a geologist, but it took me forty-five years to realize that neither my rocks nor his holes could be ground to fit.

In the beginning, in 1949, we were a stable family, a father with a secure job as a geologist with Standard Oil of California, a mother who was a part-time teacher in the Kern County school system, and two young children, a three-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy. Cheryl and Rod were my husband's children from a previous marriage, and Buster, my husband, adored them both.

"My Cheryl is beautiful. The boys will swarm around her like bees to honey."

But it was his son, Rod, on whom he lavished his praises and hopes.

"This boy is brilliant. He will be famous. He is talented, sharp, perceptive, and clever. He's smarter than any child I've ever known. Rod is a genius. I feel sorry for parents who do not have children as exceptional as Rod and Cheryl."

Our family life began in Taft, a hot, dry, dusty, bleak, desert oil town in the Southern San Joaquin Valley of Central California. When Standard Oil transferred us to Bakersfield two years later, we were delighted to live where there were big shady trees, blooming shrubs, green lawns, and well-kept streets. Always eager to make more money, Buster decided we could accomplish our goal by buying run-down properties, upgrading them, then offering them for rent. So landlords we became. Because my husband was often out of town on business, the upkeep and managing of our rentals became my responsibility.

It was a Friday afternoon. I was atop a high ladder, stapling acoustical tile across the discolored, peeling ceiling of our latest acquisition, feeling very triumphant because I had managed to nail the furring strips to which the tiles would be stapled twelve inches apart across the whole ceiling all by myself. The two rows of acoustical tiles that I had stapled so far looked fresh and clean. Eager to keep working, I stopped when I saw a tall stranger bounding into the room.

"Mrs. Ivanhoe?" he called out.

"Yes."

"Your son is a thief," he unceremoniously blurted out.

The heavy stapler slipped from my hands and fell to the floor with a bang.

"Your son is in jail. I'm a private detective hired by the Bakersfield High School, and I've been trying to nail this kid for six months. He's been stealing chemicals from the high school lab all that time. What kind of a mother are you? Don't you know what your kid is doing?"

That evening I had the difficult task of phoning my absent husband with the shocking news.

"I'm to go to juvenile hall tomorrow to talk to the authorities. I'll call you when I know more."

Once before, I had been to juvenile hall, but that time as a substitute teacher. Never, never, never could I have imagined I would visit as the heartsick mother of an inmate. When I arrived at the hall, everyone was very gracious to me. I was ushered into a room where a kindly-looking man sat behind a huge desk. He stood up when I entered.

"Please sit down, Mrs. Ivanhoe. We have sent for your son. He'll be here shortly."

I had been determined not to cry, but when they brought Rod in dressed in prison garb, an olive drab jumpsuit, ill-fitting and much too big, hanging loosely on his small frame, he looked so little and helpless. His head hung down and his eyes were red. I began to cry.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cry."

"Most mothers do," the man replied gently as he reached in a drawer and handed me a box of Kleenex.

Shock. Tears. Anger. Sorrow. Recriminations. Bewilderment from two saddened parents. Rod and a friend of his admitted to stealing chemicals from the high school lab. Their goal?

"We wanted to make an atom bomb."

Rod was put on six months probation and required to report to his probation officer every three weeks.

Buster was a devastated father.

"I am so ashamed. I can no longer face my family and my friends. This has been on the radio, in the newspapers here and even in Canada. I cannot live in Bakersfield any longer. We are going to move!"

And move we did. In 1961 we became gypsies moving from place to place with no permanent home. We were Cygani (gypsies) for the next twenty years.

Getting Ready to Roll

We had lived ten years in Bakersfield, long enough to put down roots, long enough to have a wide circle of interesting friends, long enough to be actively involved in community affairs, long enough to have a feeling of belonging.

That all ended. The day we sold our house, I feared that our lives would never be stable again. We became gypsies, moving from rental to rental in Southern California.

Disgusted and discouraged with everything and everyone, my husband quit his oil company job as a geologist and decided to be on his own as an independent oil consultant geologist-geophysicist.

"Now I'm free to go anywhere I'm called." But no one called him, and Buster became increasingly irritable, morose, and bitter, often angrily denouncing his son.

"How could Rod do this to me?"

The son he had idolized and glorified had shattered his father's dreams. If I tried to talk to Buster about Rod, he withdrew.

"You can't possibly understand my pain. You are a stepmother. I'm his father. I'm the one suffering."

Determined to find work somewhere, anywhere, Buster pursued his dream of becoming an international petroleum consultant. Day after day, he sent out his lengthy résumés to oil companies across America. He expanded his job search to Europe and Asia. He made phone calls to any geologist or geophysicist he had ever heard of. Each day he waited eagerly for the mailman and rushed to answer a ringing telephone. No luck for weeks. Then it finally happened!

When a phone call came from Tel Aviv, inquiring whether Buster was available to immediately come to Israel, the answer was a resounding, "Yes!"

In the following years, Buster made numerous regular trips from California to Israel. His work was challenging; he admired the progress made by the Israelis, and they appreciated the honesty of his reports.

This job had opened the door to others, and soon, Buster was involved in oil exploration worldwide, culminating in an extensive trip from Israel to the Middle East and on to the Orient. His self-respect had returned, and he was a pleasanter man.

In 1963, after various moves across Southern California, we had established ourselves in an apartment in...