SEVEN MEN
By Cecile Betts

My name is not Snow White but seven men have lived with me, not all at the same time. In order to be able to live on my limited income, I found it necessary to share my home. Several of my friends did it and there was that popular TV series titled Thrree’s A Crowd , the story about two women and a man who shared an apartment.
I advertised and interviewed and selected Zack. When I specified that I would not permit smoking, alcohol, pets, overnight guests. Zack said, “I like to have an occasional little glass of wine before dinner.” I thought abut that and said, “Okay, I’ll write that into our agreement.”
Zack, a tall, heavy man, in his early seventies worked in an office nearby. He was neat, didn’t do much cooking, and spent a lot of time in his recliner in his room watching TV. I soon realized the occasional little glass of wine meant a quart carafe every night. But, since he didn’t disturb me, I didn’t say anything about it. However, he brought in a half gallon of vodka and in a drunken stupor fell out of his chair one night and could not get up from the floor. I called the paramedics who checked his condition and put him back in chair. A short time after that, my lease expired and I found a place I could afford to buy. Zack wanted to move into the new place with me, but I did not permit that. I lived with an alcoholic husband (who finally did quit drinking) and I did not wish to go through that sort of thing with Zack.
The next person who shared my home, Dick, a slender, balding man in his sixties, worked for an exterminating company. During our interview I explained, “There are two things I never discuss with the person who shares my home, one is religion, the other is politics.” Dick, a member of the Jehovah’s Witness church spent his spare time distributing pamphlets published by his church and in going door to door in other communities trying to make converts. He could not say a dozen words without quoting the bible or the brethren. He seemed obsessed about what he called “fornication.”
When he lost his job with the exterminating company he went door to door signing people up for delivery of dairy products. He also sold contracts for legal services and for direct TV. Divorced three times, he had seven children including one son in prison for drug related crimes. He complained that he thought he was paying too much for his room. I said, “Dick, if you are not happy, perhaps you should look for another place.”
Then, when he made an insulting comment, I told him I would give him 30 days notice. ‘
He did not want to move at that time and told me he could stay three months without paying anything and I would have to go to court and get an eviction notice to get him out. He was wrong. There is a California law which states in a situation where there is one lodger and the owner also occupies the premises, if the lodger does not vacate the premises after a thirty day notice he can be arrested for trespassing. Thus it becomes a criminal matter rather than a civil matter.
He must have consulted the lawyers he worked for and he did vacate on time.
Lucky, the third man to share my home, worked as a driver for a limo company. Six feet tall and chubby, he displayed skinny knock-kneed legs below the shorts he wore when not working. He told me had been n officer in the Army, commissioned in the field but had left after serving twelve years. Divorced with no children, he admitted he went through bankruptcy after the divorce. He quit his job after several months and tried to promote several pie in the sky schemes on the internet and finally was unable to pay his
Share until I gae him a three day notice and then he did come up with the money. The next month I again had to give him a three day notice so I decided I’d be better off without him. He told me every story, a check was lost, it took time to get it replaced, then it was an out of state check and would take two weeks to clear. When I confronted him, he admitted there was no check and he was broke. I told him he’d have to move since I could not afford to provide him with free housing. I had to put new carpet in that room after Lucky left as he’d evidently spilled a lot of a red liquid.
Mick, an Iranian taxi driver moved in a few days after Lucky moved out. Mick, separated but not divorced from his wife, had a daughter and granddaughter nearby. He also had a nephew who owned a liquor store in Huntington Beach. He worked for his nephew for a while in addition to driving a cab. He left early in the morning and returned late at night. He was always polite and clean. But after seven months, he left to return to Iran to look after his business interests there.
Bob, number five, had been staying with his mother who only had a one bedroom unit. Retired from a career as food service manager for a national hotel chain, tall and painfully thin, he always had a glass of ice water in his hand. He complained of an ailment which required him to take large amounts of a potassium supplement which necessitated that he drink much water. After eight months, he decided to return to Arizona and asked me to give him part of his security deposit two weeks before he left. I did so, and a few weeks later found he’d put nearly $200. in long distance calls on my phone.
Tim, another Iranian gentleman, in his early fifties, divorced with one child, seemed the perfect person to share my home. A self employed mechanical engineer, he almost begged me to permit him to help me.
Meanwhile, my friend Nancy, who also had a very nice man for the second bedroom and bath in her unit, had a cat, so did the gentleman. The new cat absolutely terrorized Nancy’s cat. Nancy called me and suggested we swap. I thought aout it and we talked it over with the guys. They were agreeable. We each benefited. Tim, despite our agreement had been smokng on the patio, I pointed out that if any of my neighbors complained he would not be able to smoke there. Nancy lived on the third floor of an elevator apartment and he could smoke on the balcony without disturbing anyone. Nancygained a nice man who did not have a cat. I gained a nice person with a cat and I could enjoy the cat without having to pay vet bills or cleaning a litter box, and Gene, Number 7, had a place to stay where his cat would be welcomed.
Not exactly Doc, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, but each of the seven men who shared my home proved to be very memorable. And lest you think I am prejudiced against females, I did have a woman share my home on two occasions, but that is a separate story and the name of this one is Seven Men.

One day my father told me a story about a little girl who lived on a farm. She was a most precious bright little girl who was curious about everything but she didn’t have anyone close to her who would or could answer her questions so she kept them to herself. As she grew up she became an observer watching and learning what was going on all around her. She became a marvelous dreamer. She lived in a “What if…?” and “Someday…” world. She used her dreams as a rope of hope. She used this rope to hang onto when life became too painful to bear. She would just tie the rope of hope around her waist or wrist or whatever she needed to do to survive. She used whatever mechanisms or tools she could find until she was old enough to escape. And that is just what she did…the day after her high school graduation. She left for the city. Minneapolis. Living in the city was one of her dreams. She got a job, went to beauty school while living freely and somewhat wildly. She found after a few months that something was missing in this new life she had chosen. The routine of Sunday worship all during her growing up years as it was just something everyone did but it was no longer a part of her life and she felt emptiness. She had a choice now of worshiping her Lord and filling this void inside. Yet even as she tried to fill this empty place within her she also sought love. Love that she’d never had. The “love” her parents had shown her was one of perversion, betrayal and convenience. That was not the kind of love she’d read about in books or seen in the movies. That kind of love was romantic, sensual with kissing, touching, yearning and longing for one another. She sought out this love yet didn’t realize that giving yourself physically was not the way to find it. She had learned wrongly from her father that touching her inappropriately did not equate to love yet who could she ask? She knew in her heart that it wasn’t right and she cried out to her Father in heaven all of her life for protection and deliverance for an understanding of what was happening to her and why? Her search for love continued through many men, painful days and nights and her heart was broken on a regular basis until she grew numb and stopped feeling. Yet she never lost the dream of “someday” and the rope of hope remained in tact with many knots tied in desperation. She clung tightly to the hope and promise of a better life, a better way of living and then she met a boy whom she thought was a man. She put her hope and trusts in him only to find that he had filled part of her dreams. He asked her to marry him and move to California, the land where dreams are created and fulfilled. She packed her life in one suitcase and left on a plane taking her to reach the stars she had dreamed of for so long.
She was pregnant with his child which he made the mistake of doubting and within seven months of her arrival he had proved he was untrustworthy. Now she really needed her rope of hope! She was married to an unfaithful person, pregnant, with no job and couldn’t drive. She was totally dependent on him and at his mercy. How would she and the baby survive without him? So she adapted and learned to live with his lies, deceptions, infidelities, still clinging to the hope that if she loved him enough she could make up for the love he didn’t have or couldn’t show her. She lived this lie for twenty years and finally gave up trying to get love from someone who wasn’t capable of loving her the way she needed to be loved.
The search began again. More men with the hope that love would be found but it was not to be. More pain and disappointments. There were interludes of possibilities but the search continued and eventually led to moments of danger and finally the violation of date rape. It was an end of a painful part of her life as well as a beginning of a life lived in reality. Sometimes a very harsh reality. It was time to take her head out of the clouds and dream dreams that would materialize and become a productive part of her reality. She went to college and received her BA and MA and found work that developed her skills and her intelligence became evident and she realized that she had gifts. She spent time journaling and discovering these treasures within which excited and surprised her. She felt like a giddy child that had just found the greatest gift of all. A person she liked and admired who had been hidden inside for over 40 years! She began to express that young woman inside and let her run free and be whatever she wanted. She moved to a room in Laguna Beach which allowed her even more freedom to stretch her new identity and evolve into this new womanly creature. She dressed as she felt wearing hats, boots, military coats, ties, scarves creating new looks, fads and creations all the time finding and feeling her way into her skin.
The change seemed slow and subtle to her but her friends and even her son said she had made a drastic change…black to white.
Eventually her life led to what she may have dreamed of or even said, “I would give anything to work in the church.” Be careful what you ask or pray for. It was not what she thought it would be. She went back and got her MA in Reformation Theology something she would have never chosen but she was given a kind of backdoor entry into the program so she did it. To her surprise, she fell passionately in love with Martin Luther. Who knew? Being a Lutheran all of her life now finally meeting the man and adhere so to his beliefs? But sometimes too much knowledge will get you into trouble and that is what happened. Now she knew and she couldn’t keep quiet when the church was stepping too far into the secular world regarding morals and values so she was soon to leave the work of the church. But while she was there she flourished at everything she did. She started support groups, worked with all the local Lutheran pastors, planned creative Vacation Bible School programs, taught confirmation, Bethel Bible Series, wrote, directed and produced plays. Even published a book of her play, “Empty Places, Empty Spaces.”
Panic set in when she left the church as she had no employment. She searched for work, had an affair and experienced intimacy with someone she could trust. A gentleman. She had tasted something and wanted more of it. It was not to be. Then a relationship with a man she had made a connection with the first time they laid eyes on each other. Another experience of trust that led to an opening up of sexual expression. The freedom she felt to be able to be open, sensual, and sexual and asking for what she wanted, needed and desired was met by his total acceptance to be the woman she was. Passionate and unafraid. She knew this man was not a lifelong partner but she had learned a very important lesson on being a woman.
Loneliness came. It was filled unconsciously with food and drink; shopping but nothing filled the gap. She finally realized what she was doing to herself by trying to escape the pain of loneliness and stopped. She had hoped a long ago love which had been rekindled was an answer to her prayer but this too seems to be passing her by.
“Abba, is that the end of the story? Does the little girl finally find the love she has been looking for? Will this story end “and they lived happily ever after?” or is this to be continued…

Betty grew up with a minimal support system, which in many cases would have led to a tragic adult life. She survived this and it is what molded her character. She lost her parents while she was still in high school and had to take a school girl job to support herself. Betty was the youngest in her family. While she had sisters and brothers, they had their own problems and as a result she received minimal support from them.

Betty was born and grew up in Havre, Montana, on a farm. After her parents’ death, World War II found her in Seattle, where her sister Tana was working in a home. Betty also found work in a home while attending her senior year in high school. When the government issued an order for all Japanese in certain areas of the west coast to assemble into camps on a given date, most Japanese did not take advantage of moving eastward. They had the chance but feared to do so. Having grown up in Montana, Betty and Tana moved back to escape being put in the War Relocation Center. They were familiar with the interior of the United States unlike most Nisei and had no fear of leaving the west coast and the many Japanese who lived there…. Shortly thereafter they found jobs in different homes in Minneapolis.

Tana met a serviceman and soon married and left the area. Betty found herself alone again at the age of nineteen still working in homes. She later found an apartment and worked herself thru beauty school doing odd jobs. Upon completion she left Minneapolis to live with her brother Frank and oldest sister Mary in Chicago. She found employment as a beautician.

She soon discovered that doing women's hair required listening to the sad problems women had in their daily lives. This would upset her. The content of the job was suppose to be to do prideful work in beautifying them. Instead she found that success required listening to the sorry tales that many customers dispensed. Her sensitive nature made this work upsetting.

For this reason she applied for a dental assistant's job with Dr. Tom Hiura on the near northside of Chicago and was hired. She found the job that suited her.

The doctor had many Japanese-speaking patients. Her Japanese was minimal but she made the effort to communicate with them using half-English and half-Japanese. Due to her empathy for people’s physical pain, she managed to understand their problems and spent the time squeezing in appointments for the worst cases. This was a busy one-person office. The result was an extended work-day. In addition to assisting the dentist Betty was also the receptionist and took care of the appointment desk. I would come to the office after her work to take her to dinner, but many times I would have to wait an hour before she was finished. What got to me was she did not receive overtime pay. In those days many doctors didn’t pay their assistance overtime. Under this situation wouldn’t most receptionists just say sorry and have the patients wait another day? But that was Betty… She didn’t have the heart to turn people away that were in physical pain.

Betty was nice looking and always dressed well. She was also such an upbeat person that people seemed to be attracted to her. It was only years later when I was taking a sensitivity course in leadership training that I was able to understand why I and so many people were drawn to her. And I don’t mean as lovers. We were drawn to her because she elicited an aura of understanding when we talked to her. She was an active listener. When Betty engaged in any one-on-one encounter with anyone, she was totally attentive in that relationship. One knew that she cared and had one’s interest at heart. Most of us would engage in conversation and while the other was talking we’d be thinking about what to say or how to bring up our similar experience or even how to one up the other. Not so with Betty... Her responses were almost always a follow-up to what you were saying and sensitive to the issues being discussed. I loved to talk to her about my heroics. She listened attentively and never seemed to be bored. When I would go into the results of my technical investigations at work, she would look at me with awe and wonder. (Later in life I noticed that in the middle of similar discourses, her eyes would glaze over and she would muffle her yawns. To my credit I learned to stop talking or changed the subject.)

It was only about twenty years later that I learned the rudiments of “Active listening” in a “How to be a supervisor” class, and years more to practice it. Betty had acquired it from being on her own at an early age and her need to have others accept her.

In separate households as we grew up, Betty and I in our formative years were inculcated with Meiji era (early 20th century) Japanese mores brought over from Japan by our parents. In the meantime the people’s life style in Japan progressed (regressed ?) in the Showa era (Hirohito). The result of all this was that the Japanese in America were more “old fashion” than the Japanese in Japan. The tendency was to be passive and reserved.
While we Nisei prided ourselves in our worldly endeavors as being American, Japanese mores were strong in our makeup--a strong family bond, strong relationships, self-sacrificing, hard work, humble, don’t make waves, loyal, self-effacing, etc.
The many Nisei girls that I met along the way had these characteristics. What made Betty different was the fact that her parents died while she was in her teens. This loosened her ties from things Japanese. As a result unlike most Nisei girls her personality was different. It was refreshingly American and warm. This is another reason why I was attracted to Betty. The American influence made her a much warmer person than most Nisei girls, who tended to be reserved, but still her character was developed from her Japanese mores. What a combination, my sub-conscious must have thought, an American with outward personality and yet sensitive and with most of the old Japanese character.

This is quite a revelation to me as I probe on “Why Betty?” Growing up in a non-Japanese community had made me so much of an American that the person who would be most dear to me had to have an American personality.

And so it is that we will be celebrating our 60th anniversary in June 2008. We will be 84 and 85 years old.

Tatiana Erohina

I think of my Greek grandma every morning when I don’t know what to wear. I can see her face with a big hooked Greek nose about which she used to say it was meant for two people, but she alone got it, and her perfectly brown eyes with a spark in them looking at me as she said teasingly, “Put on your green cloak.” There is a Russian joke about a poor man who had only a green cloak, and every morning, he would look out the window and say, “Oh, it’s raining today. Of course, I’ll wear my green cloak.” Then, if the sun were shining, he would say, “Oh, it’s sunny today. But of course I’ll wear my green cloak.” Another of her wise sayings was when I complained to her that my clothes were old fashioned, she would say, “No one is going to take them off you and give you new ones.”

Our grandmother was Greek born in Turkey. She was only six years old when the family moved to Southern Russia; therefore, missing the massacre of about 3,000 Greeks by the Turks. She had never attended school because her father believed that only boys must go to school. However, she used to run away secretly to the village teacher. She was basically a self-taught person not only in language but also in cooking, knitting, embroidering, etc. She had read a lot of Russian classics, and she knitted and embroidered hats, sweaters, and socks for my sister and me. On special holidays, in addition to elaborate Russian dishes, she would come up with some exotic dishes, most likely Turkish or Greek.

When we were little, every night, we listened to our grandma’s fairy tales. Our favorite one was about a prince who flew on a giant bird to the underworld to save the abducted princess. This fairy tale was unique, and I have never seen it published or known anyone else who has heard it. No one could ever replace our grandma!

Dave Blodgett - Assignment #6

His lean, coiled, six-foot frame bursts full tilt from the LST’s bow onto the sandy beach of Mindoro Island in the Philippines—a jaunty pheasant feather fluttering from the band of his Robin Hood felt hat; two ten-inch, razor sharp knives strapped to his legs and a fully loaded Thompson submachine gun clutched lovingly in his powerful arms.

He finds his prey—two half-dead Japanese soldiers huddled in a concrete pillbox. He waves them out and methodically crushes their skulls with the butt of the submachine gun. He is the Silver Star commanding officer of our 26-boat PT task unit and he is quite mad.

The Silver Star? He gathers a small, volunteer group of enlisted boat crewmen, hops on board PT75, roars full throttle to the stricken, burning PT boat tender, the U.S.S. Orestes, sitting 400 yards off shore and ready to blow its load of aviation gasoline and torpedoes at any minute, climbs on board, puts out the fire, rescues several wounded officers and crewmen and brings them ashore, searches and finds the Orestes’ commanding officer—one of the first to abandon the doomed ship hit by a Japanese suicide plane—and tears his face to bloody ribbons with his bare fists.

Although certifiably insane, our commanding officer—who loves to go ashore as we work our way up the New Guinea coast “to get in a little hand-to-hand fighting with the Nips”—is the most heroic warrior I encounter during combat in World War II and earns his Silver Cross for gallantry under enemy fire.