Life on Catalina was just to good to last. The old "Redneck" weakness for things back home was just to much for my parents. Little brother and me adapted to our new life but mom and dad didn't. What was supposed to have been a two week visit back home turned into a permanent relocation. I doubted the wisdom of leaving California but I was powerless to change anything. I would learn many years later that Lowell was of the same mind but like me understood that children could not question adult decisions. Looking back with an adult point of view I see that my dad would have most likely remained on Catalina. He understood that there was no future in Alabama.

My grand mother on my mom's side was a frail sickly woman, forever plagued by one malady or the other. She had never accepted the fact that my mom married much less moved clear across the country to California. That being the case, every letter from her was filled with "Misery and Woe". Finally she sent us the dreaded "Spot on the lung" letter. The "Spot" was a seemingly common illness among old southern people at that time. I"m not really sure if such a thing existed but it damn sure got lots of play back then. Just the very mention of it conjured up terrible images of sickness and suffering.

Grandma Mattie needed her baby girl to come home. I wasn't old enough or "savvy" enough to fully understand the impact of what was taking place but I had a pretty fair idea. The trip to Alabama was like driving home from the funeral of a loved one. You knew that nothing was going to be the same as it had been. Man oh man how little I really knew. However, the rest of my life would hinge on this return to the beginning. The Catalina experience would play a big part in who I was and what I would become. I've often wondered how different things would have been if we'd stayed in California.