To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 17 - Starting Over

My daughter Susan married Henry Schultz on Saturday, 1 August 195, in Mark's Episcopal Church, The Paseo at 63^rd in Kansas City. Brian was there and gave his daughter in marriage; Marian stayed behind in Dallas, with her children... and, I must add, with an acceptable excuse. She was at or near term with her latest baby, and could reasonably have asked Brian to stay at home. Instead she urged him not to disappoint Susan.

I'm not sure Susan would have noticed, but I would have.

Over half of my children were there, most of them with their spouses, and about forty of my grandchildren and their spouses, along with a sprinkling of great-grandchildren - and one great-great-grandchild. Not bad, for a woman whose official age was forty-seven. Not bad even for a woman whose actual age was seventy years and four weeks.

Impossible? Not quite. My Nancy gave birth to her Roberta on Christmas Day 1918. Roberta married at sixteen (Zachary Barstow) and bore Anne Barstow on 2 November 1935. Anne Barstow married Eugene Hardy and had her first child, Nancy Jane Hardy, on 22 june 1952.

Name Birth Date Relationship

Maureen Johnson (Smith) 4 Jul 1882 great-great-grandmother

Nancy Smith (Weatheral) 1 Dec 1899 great-grandmother

Roberta Weatheral (Barstow) 25 Dec 1918 grandmother

Anne Barstow (Hardy) 2 Nov 1935 mother

Nancy Jane Hardy 22 Jun 1952 daughter

According to the Archives Nancy Jane Hardy (Foote) gave birth to Justin Foote, first of that name, on the last day of the twentieth century, 31 December 2000. I married his (and my) remote descendant, Justin Foote the forty-fifth, in marrying into the Lazarus Long family in Gregorian AD 4316, almost twenty-four centuries later - my hundred-and-first year by my personal time line.

The Schultz family was almost as well represented at Susan's wedding as the Johnson family, even though most of them had to fly in from California or from Pennsylvania. But they could not show five generations, all in one room. I was delighted that we could, and I did not hang back when the photographer, Kenneth Barstow, wanted a group picture of us. He seated me in the middle with my great-great granddaughter in my lap, while my daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter hovered around us, like angels around Madonna and Child.

Whereupon we got scolded. Ken kept shooting pictures until Nancy Jane got bored with it and started to cry. At that point Justin Weatheral moved in and said, ‘Ken, may I see your camera?'

‘Certainly, Uncle Justin.' (Honorary uncle - first cousin twice removed, I believe. The Howard Families were beginning to reach the point where everyone was related to everyone else... with those inevitable defects through inbreeding that later had to be weeded out.)

‘You can have it back in a moment. Now, ladies - you especially, Maureen - what I have to say is strictly among ourselves, persons registered with the Foundation. Look around you. Is the lodge tyled? Are there any strangers among us?'

I said, ‘Justin, admission to this reception is by card only. Almost anyone could have been at the wedding. But it takes a card to get inside this room. I sent them out for our family; Johanna Schultz handled it for Henry's relatives.'

‘I got in without a card.'

‘Justin, everybody knows you.'

‘That's my point. Who else got in without a card? Good old Joe Blow, whom everybody knows, of course. Is that Joe behind the table, ladling out punch?'

I answered, ‘Of course there are hired staff inside. Musicians. the caterer's people. And such.'

‘And such. Exactly.' Justin lowered his voice, spoke directly to us five and to Ken. ‘You all know the efforts of all of us are making to keep our ages optimised. You, Maureen, how old are you?'

‘Uh... forty-seven.'

‘Nancy? Your age, dear?'

Nancy started to say, ‘Fifty-two.' She got out the, first syllable, bit it off. ‘Oh, shucks, Papa-Weatheral, I don't keep track of my age.'

‘Your age, Nancy,' Justin insisted.

‘Let me see. Mama had me at fifteen, so - How old are you, Mama?'

‘Forty-seven.'

‘Yes, of course. I'm thirty-two.'

Justin looked at my granddaughter Roberta, my great-granddaughter Anne, and my great-great-granddaughter Nancy Jane, and said, I'm not going to ask the ages of you three, because any way you answer would emphasise the impossibility of reconciling your very existence with Nancy's and Maureen's claimed age. Speaking for the trustees I can say how pleased we are with how thoroughly all of you are carrying out the purpose of Ira Howard's will. But, again speaking for the trustees, I must again emphasise the necessity of never calling attention to our peculiarity. We must try to avoid having anyone notice that we are in any way different.'

He sighed, then went on: ‘So I am forced to say that I am sorry to see you five ladies all in one room at one time, and to add that I hope that it will never happen again. And I shiver at the idea that you are being photographed together. If that photograph wound up in the society section of next Sunday's Journal-Post, it could ruin the careful efforts of all our cousins to avoid calling attention to ourselves. Ken, don't you think it would be well to kill that picture?'

Ken Barstow was outgunned; I could see that he was about to let the Foundation's chief officer have his own way.

But I was not outgunned. ‘Hey! Justin, you stop that! You're chairman of the board, surely. But nobody appointed you God. Those photos were taken for me and my kids. You kill them, or get Ken to, and I'm going to beat you over the head with his camera.'

‘Now, Maureen - ‘

‘ "Now Maureen" my tired feet! We'll keep it out of the papers, certainly. But I want five copies of Ken's best shot, one for each of us. And Ken is entitled to a copy for his own files, if he wants it.'

We agreed on that and Justin asked for one to place in the Archives.

I thought at the time that Justin was being unnecessarily cautious. I was wrong. Justin, in instituting and stubbomly pressing the policy later known as the Masquerade, caused our cousins to enter the Interregnum of the Prophets with eighty per cent having public ages under forty, only three per cent with public ages over fifty. Once the Prophet's thought police were active it became both difficult and dangerous to switch backgrounds and change identities; Justin's foresight made it usually unnecessary to attempt it.

According to the Archives Brian died in 1998 at the age of 119 - a newsworthy age in the twentieth century. But his public age at that time was eighty-two, which is not newsworthy at all. Justin's policies allowed almost all Howard clients to enter the Interregnum (2012) with reduced public ages that let them live and die without conspicuously living too long.

Thank God I didn't have to cope with it! No, not ‘Thank God' - Thank Hilda Mae, Zeb, Deety, Jake, and a wonderful, lovable machine named ‘Gay Deceiver'. I would like to see all five of them right now; Mama Maureen needs rescuing again.

Maybe Pixel will find them. I think he understood me.

Several out-of-towners stayed over the weekend, but by Tuesday morning 5 August I was alone - truly alone for the first time in my seventy years of life. My two youngest - Donald, sixteen, and Priscilla, fourteen - were still unmarried. But they were no longer mine. In the divorce settlement, they had elected to stay with the children they had been living with as brothers and sisters - and who were now legally their brothers and sisters as Marian had adopted them.

Susan was the youngest of the four who had lived with Betty Lou and Nelson during the War, and the last to marry.

Alice Virginia had married Ralph Sperling right after the War ended; Doris Jean married Roderick Briggs the following year; and Patrick Henry, my son by Justin, had married Charlotte Schmidt in 1951.

Betty Lou and Nelson moved to Tampa shortly after I returned home, taking with them their three who were still at home. Her parents and Nelson's mother Aunt Carole were in Florida; Betty Lou wanted to look after all of them. (How old was Aunt Carole in 1946? She was the widow of Father's elder brother, so she - Goodness! In 1946 she must have been on or near her century mark. Yet she looked the same as ever the last time I had seen her, uh - shortly before Japan's sneak attack in ‘41. Did she dye her hair?)

On Saturday I had been triste not only because my last chick was getting married and leaving home but also (and primarily) because Susan's wedding day was Father's century day; he was born 2 August 1852.

Apparently no one associated the date with Father, and I mentioned it to no one because a wedding day belongs to the couple getting married and no one should bring up any subject, say or do anything, that might subtract from the joyfulness of the occasion. So I had kept quiet.

But I was constantly aware of the date. It had been twelve years and two months since Father had gone to war... and I had missed him every one of those four thousand, four hundred, and forty-one days - and most especially during the years after Brian turned me in for a newer model.

Please understand me; I am not condemning Brian. I had stopped being fertile around the beginning of World War Two, whereas. Marian was still decidedly fertile - and children are the purpose of a Howard-sponsored marriage. Marian was willing and able to bear him more children but she wanted that marriage licence. That's understandable.

Neither of them tried to get rid of me. Brian assumed that I would stay, until I made it clear that I would not. Marian begged me to stay, and cried when I left.

But Dallas is not Boondock, and the unnatural practice of monogamy is as rooted in the American culture of the twentieth century as group marriage is rooted in the quasi anarchistic, unstructured culture of Tertius in the third millennium of the diaspora. At the time I decided not to stay with Brian and Marian I had no Boondock experience to guide me; I simply knew in my gut that, if I stayed, Marian and I would be locked, willy-nilly, in a struggle for dominance, a struggle that neither of us wanted, and that Brian would be buffeted by our troubles and made unhappy thereby.

But that does not mean that I was happy about leaving. A divorce, any divorce no matter how necessary, is an amputation. For a long time I felt like an animal that has gnawed off its own leg in order to escape from a trap.

By my own time line all this happened more than eighty years ago. Am I still resentful?

Yes, I am. Not at Brian - at Marian. Brian was a man with no malice in him; I am sure in my heart that he did not intend to mistreat me. At worst, one may say that it was not too bright of him to impregnate his sons widow. But how many men are truly wise in their handling of women? In all history you can count them on the fingers of one thumb.

Marian - She is another matter. She rewarded my hospitality by demanding that my husband divorce me. My father had taught me never to expect that imaginary emotion, gratitude. But am I not entitled to expect decent treatment from a guest under my roof?

Gratitude: an imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behaviour, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion. Long ago Mr Clemens demonstrated in his essay ‘What is Man?' that every one of us act at all rimes in his own interest. Once you understand this, it offers a way to negotiate with an antagonist in order to find means to cooperate with him for mutual benefit. But if you are convinced of your own altruism and you try to shame him out of his horrid selfishness, you will get nowhere.

So, in dealing with Marian, where did I go wrong?

Did I lapse into the error of altruism?

I think I did. I should have said, ‘Listen, bitchie! Behave yourself and you can live here as long as you like. But forget this idea of trying to crowd me out of my own home, or you and your nameless babe will land out there in the snow. If I don't tear, out your partition instead.' And to Brian: ‘Don't try it, buster! Or I'll find a shyster who will make you wish that you had never laid eyes on that chippie. We'll take you for every dime.'

But those are just middle-of-the-night thoughts. Marriage is a psychological condition, not a civil contract and a licence. Once a marriage is dead, it is dead, and it begins to stink even faster than dead fish. What matters is not who killed it but the fact of its death. Then it becomes time to divvy-up, split up, and run, with no time wasted on recriminations.

So why am I wasting time eighty years later brooding over the corpse of a long-dead marriage - when I am having enough trouble from these murderous spooks? I feel sure that Pixel does not fret over the ghosts of long-dead tabby cats. He lives in the eternal now... and I should, too.

In 1946, as soon as I was back in Kansas City, the first thing I wanted to do was to register as a college student. Both the University of Kansas City and Rockhurst College were a mile north of us at 53^rd Street, each a block off Rockhill Boulevard, Rockhurst to the east and KCU to the west - five minutes by car, tem by bus, or a pleasant twenty-minute walk in good weather. The Medical School of the University of Kansas was just west of 39^th and State line, ten minutes by car. The Kansas City School of Law was downtown, a twenty-minute drive.

Each had advantages and shortcomings Rockhurst was very small but it was a Jesuit school and therefore probably high in scholarship. It was a school for men but not totally so. I had been told that its coeds were all nuns, schoolteachers improving their credentials, so I was not sure that I would be welcome. Father McCaw, president of Rockhurst, set me straight:

‘Mrs Johnson, our policies are not set in stone. While most of our students are men, we do not exclude women who seriously desire what we offer. We are a Catholic school but we welcome non-Catholics. Here at Rockhurst we do not actively proselytise but perhaps I should warn you that Episcopalians, such as yourself, exposed to sound Catholic doctrine, often wind up converted to the true Church. If, while you are among us, you find yourself in need of instruction in faith and dogma, we will be happy to supply it. But we will not pressure you. Now... Are you degree-seeking? Or not?'

I explained to him that I had registered as a special student and potential candidate for a bachelor's degree at KCU. ‘But I am more interested in an education than I am in a degree. That is why I have come here. I am aware of the reputation of the Jesuits for scholarship. I hope to learn things here that I would not learn on the other campus.'

‘One may always hope.' He scribbled something on a pad, tore it off and gave it to me. ‘You are a special student now, entitled to attend any lecture course. There are additional fees for some courses, such as laboratory courses. Take this to the Bursar's office; they'll accept your tuition fee and straighten you out on other charges. Stop in and see me in a week or two.'

The next six years, 1946-52, I spent in school, including summer sessions. My home had no babies in it and no small children. There is not much work in such a household and what there was, I delegated - to Doris, sixteen and just starting to check her Howard list under my protective chaperonage, and to Susan, who was only twelve and still virgin (I felt fairly sure) But an outstanding cook for her age. So I started in on her sex education, being aware of the strong correlation between good cooking and a high libido... only to find that Aunt Betty Lou had done well by my girls in bringing them up as innocent sophisticates, well-informed about their bodies and their female heritage long before they would have to face that heritage emotionally.

I had just one son at home, Pat, fourteen in ‘46. I decided, somewhat reluctantly, that I was going to have to check on his knowledge of sex - before he contracted some silly disease, or impregnated a twelve-year-old moron with big breasts and a small brain, or got caught in a public scandal. I had never had to cope with this before; either Brian, or Father, or both, had taught my sons.

Patrick was patient with me.

Finally he said, ‘Mama, is' there something special you want to ask me? I'll try. Auntie B'Lou gave me the same examination she gave Alice and Doris... and I missed only one question.'

(Shut my mouth.) ‘What was the question you missed?'

‘I couldn't define "ectopic pregnancy". But I can now. Shall I?'

‘Never mind. Did Aunt Betty Lou or Uncle Nelson discuss the Ira Howard Foundation with you?'

Some. When Alice started courting, Uncle Nelson got me aside and told me to mind my own business and keep my mouth shut... then to see him again when I wanted to start courting myself. If I did. I didn't think I would. But I did. So I did... and he told me about baby subsidies. For Howard babies. For Howard babies only.'

‘Yes. Well, dear, Aunt Betty Lou and Uncle Nelson seem to have told you everything I could tell you. Uh... Did Uncle Nelson ever show you the Forberg etchings?'

‘No.'

(Damn it, Briney; why aren't you here? This is your job.) ‘Then I must show them to you. If I can find them.'

‘Auntie B'Lou showed them to me. They're in my room.' He smiled shyly. ‘I like to look at them. Shall I get them for you?'

‘No. Well, at your convenience. Patrick, you seem to know all about sex a boy your age needs to know. Is there anything I can tell you? Or do for you?'

‘Uh... I guess not. Well - Auntie B'Lou used to keep me supplied with fishskins. I promised her that I would always use them... but Walgren's won't sell them to anyone my a age,'

(What else has Betty Lou dope for him? Is intercourse with an aunt incest? Correction: is an aunt-in-law incest? They are certainly no blood relation. Maureen, mind your own business.)

‘All right, I'll keep you supplied. Uh, Patrick, where have you been using them? Not who, but where?'

‘Right now I only know one girl that well... and her mother is very fussy. Her mother has told her to do it only at home, in their basement playroom. Or else.'

(I did not ask about ‘Or else'.) ‘Her mother seems very sensible. Well, dear, you can do it safely here at home, too. But nowhere else, I hope Not in Swope Park, for example. Too risky.' (Maureen, who are you to talk?)

All three were good children and I had no trouble with them. Aside from some mild supervision the household ran itself and I had plenty of time for school. By the time Susan married in August 1952 I had not one but four degrees: bachelor of arts, bachelor of laws, master of science, and doctor of philosophy. Preposterous!

But here is how the rabbit got into the hat:

I could not claim a high school education because a high school diploma dated 1898 would have been horribly inconsistent with my claimed Howard age (forty-four in 1946). Oh, whenever possible I listed my age as ‘over 21' but, if pinned down, I claimed my Howard age and avoided situations that could possibly tie me into anything that happened before about 1910. Mostly I did this by keeping my lips zipped - no ‘Did you know so-and-so?' and no ‘Remember whens'.

So, when I registered at KCU ir was not as a freshman, but as a special student. Then I asked for advanced standing and degree-seeking status, through examinations, and did not boggle at the high fees quoted to me for special examinations to discover just where I stood in English and American literature, American history, world history, mathematics, Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics, and general science. During the remainder of that semester I took examinations steadily, cramming for the next one at night and sometimes attending lectures across the boulevard for dessert.

Toward the beginning of the summer session I was called to the office of the Dean of Academics, Dr Bannister.

‘Please sit down, Mrs Johnson.'

I sat down and waited. In appearance he reminded me of Mr Clemens, even though he did not wear white suits and did not smoke (thank goodness!) those horrible cigars. But he had that untidy halo of white hair and that look of a jovial Satan. I liked him on sight.

He went on: ‘You have completed your special examinations. May I ask what standing you expected to receive here?'

‘I had no expectations, Doctor. I asked to be examined in order to find out where I belong.'

‘Hmm. Your application shows no schools.'

‘I was privately tutored, sir.'

‘Yen, so I sce. You've never attended school?'

‘I have attended a number of schools, sir. But briefly, never long enough for academic credit. My father travelled a great deal:

‘What did your father do?'

‘He was a doctor of medicine, sir.'

‘You used the past tense.'

‘He was killed in the Battle of Britain, Doctor.'

‘Oh. Sorry. Mrs Johnson, your correct advanced standing is that of bachelor of arts - no, no, attend me. We do not award that degree or any degree simply on the basis of examinations with no time in residence. Do you expect to be on campus for the next two semesters? The academic year of 1946-47?'

‘Certainly. And this present summer session as well. And then some, as I purpose asking to be accepted as a candidate for a doctor's degree if and when I achieve a baccalaureate.'

Indeed. In what field?'

‘Philosophy. Metaphysics, in particular.'

‘Well. Mrs Johnson, you amaze me. In your application you describe yourself as "housewife".'

‘Me description is correct, Doctor. I still have three children at home. However, two of them are adolescent girls; both are good cooks. With cooking and housekeeping divided among us we all have time to go to school. And, I assure you, there is nothing basically incompatible between dishwater and curiosity abut noumera. I am a grandmother who never had time to go to college But I cannot believe that I'm too old to learn. This granny refuses to sit by the fire and knit.' I added, ‘Dr Will Durant lectured here in 1921. That was my initial exposure to metaphysics.'

‘Yes, I heard him myself. An evening series at the Grand Avenue Temple. A charming speaker. Goodness, you hardly seem old enough. That was twenty-five years ago.'

‘My father took me. I promised myself that I would resume the study of philosophy when I had time. Now I do.'

‘I see. Mrs Johnson, do you know what I taught before I went into administration?'

‘No, sir.' (Of course I know! Father would be ashamed of me if I failed to scout the territory.)

‘I taught Latin and Greek... and the Hellenic philosophers. Then the years moved along, and Latin was no longer required and Greek no longer offered, and Greek philosophers were ignored in favor of "modern" ideas, such as Freud and Marx and Dewey and Skinner. So I was faced with a need to find something else to do on campus... or go look for a job somewhere in the busy marts of trade.' He smiled ruefully. ‘Difficult. A professor from the physical sciences can find work with Dow Chemical or with D. D. Harriman. But a teacher of Greek? Never mind. You say you plan to take this summer session:

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Suppose we call you a senior now... and graduate you at the end of the first semester, January ‘47, as a bachelor of arts, uh, major subject, modern languages; minor in - oh, what you will. Classical languages. History. But you can use the summer session and the first semester to support your real purpose, metaphysics. Um. I'm a grandfather myself, Mrs Johnson, and an obsolete teacher of forgotten subjects. But would it suit you to have me as your faculty adviser?'

‘Oh, would you?'

‘I find an interest in your purpose... and I feel sure that we can assemble a committee sympathetic to that purpose. Hmm -

‘ "Old age hath yet hls honour and his toil.

Death doses all; but something ere the end

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods." ‘

I picked it up:

‘"The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world." ‘

He smiled widely, and answered:

‘"Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die." ‘

He stood up. ‘Tennyson wears well, does he not? And if Odysseus can challenge age, so can we. Come in tomorrow and let's start planning a course of study toward your doctorate. Most of it will have to be independent study but we will look over the prospectus and see what courses could be useful to you.'

In June 1950 I was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy in metaphysics, my dissertation being tided ‘A Comparison of the World Pictures of Aristocles, Arouet, and Dzhugashvili considered through interaction of epistemology, teleology, and eschatology.' The actual content was zero, as honest metaphysics must be, but I loaded it with Boolean algebra, which (if solved) proved that Dzhugashvili was a murdering scoundrel... as the kulaks of the Ukraine knew too well.

I gave a copy of my dissertation to Father McCaw and invited him to my convocation. He accepted, then glanced at the dissertation and smiled. ‘I think Plato would be pleased to be in the company of Voltaire... but each of them would shun the company of Stalin.'

Over the course of many years the only person to translate correctly at first glance all three of those names was Father MeCaw... except Dr Bannister, who thought up the joke.

The dissertation was not important. But the rides required that I submit enough pounds of scholarly manuscript to justify the degree. And for four years I had a wonderfully good time, both there and across the boulevard.

The same week I got my Ph.D. I registered at KU Medical School and at Kansas City School of Law - little conflict as most lectures at the Law School were at night, whereas the courses I took at the Medical School were during the day. I was not a candidate for MD but for a master's degree in biochemistry. I had to register for a couple of upper division courses, but was allowed to do so while being accepted as a candidate for MS (I think I would have been turned down had I not walked in with a still-damp doctorate). I did not really care whether or not I received the master's degree; I simply wanted to treat an excellent applied-science school as an intellectual smorgasbord. Father would have loved it.

I could have had that degree in one year; I stayed longer because there were still more courses I wanted to attend. In the meantime the KC School of Law was supposed to require four years... but I had been there before, having attended several of their courses while Brian was getting his law degree, 1934-38. The dean was willing to credit me with courses simply by examination as long as I paid full-fees for each course - it was a proprietary school; fees were a prime consideration.

I took the bar examinations in the spring of 1952 - and passed, to the surprise of my classmates and professors. It may have helped that my papers read: ‘M. J. Johnson' rather than ‘Maureen Johnson'. Once I was admitted to the bar there was no fuss about my law degree; the school boasted about the percentage of its students that made it all the way into the bar - a much tougher hurdle than the degree.

That is how I legitimately got four academic degrees in six years. But I honestly think that I learned the most at the tiny little Catholic college at which I was only a listener, never a candidate for a degree.

Especially from a Japanese-American Jesuit priest, Father Tezuka.

For the first time in my life had an opportunity to learn an oriental language and I jumped at the chance. This class was for prospective missionaries to replace those liquidated in the war; it had both priests and seminarians. I was welcome for just one reason, I think: Japanese language structure and idiom and Japanese culture make even greater differences between male and female than does American culture and American language. I was an instructional tool'.

In 194=, the summer we spent in Chicago, I took advantage of the opportunity to study semantics under Count Alfred Korzybski and Dr S. I. Hayakawa, as the Institute for General Semantics was dose to where we lived - across the Mall and east a couple of blocks at 1234 East 56^th. One thing that stuck in my mind was the emphasis both scholars placed on the fact that a culture was reflected in its language, that indeed the two were so interwoven that another language of a different structure (a ‘metalanguage') was needed to discuss the matter adequately.

Now consider the dates. President Patton was elected in November 1948 and succeeded President Barkley in January 1949.

The Osaka Incident took place in December 1948, Between President Patton's election and his inauguration. So President Patton was faced with what amounted to open rebellion in the Far Eastern Possessions formerly known as the Japanese Empire. The secret society, The Divine Wind, seemed willing to exchange ten of their number for one of ours indefinitely.

In his inauguration address President Patton informed the Japanese and the world that this exchange was not acceptable. Starting at once, it was one American dead, one Shintoist shrine destroyed and defiled, with the price going up with each incident.