The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [180]
People from the Ozarks transplanted to Anaheim still greeted one another with “Howdy” and dropped their “g’s” and periodically they observed “Old-timey Days,” particularly the Second Tuesday of the Month, and some of the men whittled, and some of the women held quilting bees, although all of the old-timey superstitions and remedies were forgotten, and there was no condemnation of PROG RESS, because PROG RESS was going on all around them: Anaheim was growing at a phenomenal rate, everybody was prospering. When John Henry Ingledew arrived with Sonora and his four daughters, the other Stay Morons gave them a big welcome party, because they were delighted to have at last a genuine Ingledew among them, since they already had a Dinsmore, a Whitter, a Duckworth, a Coe, a Chism, a Plowright, a Swain and a Stapleton.
John Henry “Hank” Ingledew quickly found employment, at high pay, as an electronics technician for a huge canning factory, an operation that made Oren Duckworth’s snap and ’mater canning factory look like nothing to write home about. (The Duckworth factory did reopen for a few summers after the war, but the competition, most of it coming from California, killed it, and Duckworth too moved to Anaheim.) The factory Hank Ingledew worked for was automated, and his job was to service the electronic apparatus which automated it. Also he “moonlighted,” after hours, as a repairman of television sets, and made so much money that he and his family could afford to live in an opulent twelve-room “Spanish colonial” house (which will never be illustrated in any history of architecture). Sonora joined a women’s club, and the daughters went to good kindergartens and schools. Every weekend, if somebody’s TV set wasn’t in urgent need of repair, they all went to the beach, where Hank could stare at his ocean, or rather John Henry could, because as soon as he arrived in California he let it be known that he would prefer not to be addressed by the nickname of his Stay More boyhood, although it took Sonora a full two years to get out of the habit of calling him Hank, and even after two years she would sometimes forget herself, especially when she was being endearing, as she often was, unhampered by worry since a California gynecologist fitted her out with a diaphragm.
But when her youngest daughter, Patricia, was old enough to leave home and go to kindergarten, Sonora found that her days were empty. She thought of getting a job, but John Henry pointed out to her that they already had more money than they knew what to do with. Sonora became addicted to daytime soap operas and quiz shows on television, and her days were long and lonely and repetitious. When she simply could not stand to watch the tube, she began to write long letters, to her mother and a few other chums back home in Stay More. She told them of all the things she did, and all the things she possessed, and how happy her daughters were, and how busy John Henry was. They replied with what little news Stay More yielded: deaths mostly, the changing of the seasons (which Sonora missed), drought, flood, a rare wedding, and Decoration Day at the cemetery.
Without discussing it with John Henry, out of fear that he would say no, Sonora took to leaving her diaphragm in its case. She was, after all, only twenty-seven, and they could,