Linda Lee Reinig Sefcik

I was born on April 4, 1952 in Alma, Nebraska - my mother's home town.
I was the third child of John and Joyce Reinig- in as many years. My dad was a supervisor on construction projects- building dams and highways- and our little family moved with his work. We lived in "trailer houses" until I was five years old.

Now... it used to be that you could haul a "trailer" from one "trailer park" to another with a good car... not like today's mobile homes that require a powerful truck to move them. Trailers... were small. The trailer I remember had one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen-living area, and a cubby hole in the hall with a mattress on top and storage underneath. I believe all three of us kids slept in that cubby hole, but I have no recall of it.

When I was five years old, we moved into a house on a corner lot in Altus, Oklahoma. There was a lilac bush, a small shed in the back, a black dog named "Lady" who I loved dearly and who was killed chasing a car... and a 6-ft high concrete-brick fence that ran all the way down the alley. I remember that wall because we kids would crawl along it and down three houses to steal peaches from a neighbor's peach trees.

There was a laundrymat at the end of the street and I would walk down with Mom when she went on her laundry day. She always gave me a nickel to get peanuts out of the candy machine. I went to kindergarten at the "Ding Dong Kindergarten School" run by some really wonderful ladies. Our graduation included a group dressed in long dresses dancing a waltz or something... and a performance by three girls... one was me. We were dressed like tea pots and sang "I'm a Little Tea Pot." (I really wanted to do the long dress performance).

We had neighbors that I remember - Connie and Carol, who would babysit me. Was it... Connie?... who... one day when I went down to see her... would not leave her TV... because Elvis Presley was on American Bandstand ??

We all got steel roller skates for Christmas and were out on the sidewalks. These were the kind of skates that had braces that tightened on either side of your shoe, and required a skate key to tighten them. We skated all through our childhood... years later we were still skating on those steel skates. When skate boards became the fashion, we made our own skateboards out of those old skates.

The next year, we moved to Oklahoma City and I went to 1st grade at Putnam City Elementary. I have various memories of school, but... my favorite activity was on the single gym bars. I had watched other girls wrap one knee over the bar and throw themselves backwards and around -- and then keep going around and around and around. Some could do it without hands on the bars. Well... I learned to do that.

The next year we moved to a big house with big rooms on Guilford Lane on the northern edge of the city... with a huge yard. You could climb one of the elm trees in our yard and watch the screen at the Twilight Gardens Drive-In Theater. When it rained we had a creek which ran for nearly a mile through yards and under roads, and we'd have boat races all the way down. And we'd catch crawdads and tadpoles and swim in that creek.

We had a huge patio back of the house that was great for skating, playing marbles, or putting on a dance recital for the neighbors. One neighbor had a huge sand box where we spent hours designing houses and drive-ways for our little steel cars. We had bicycle races with markers around a track that spanned several huge back yards. We played school in another neighbors full-size play house that had a huge black board along one wall. We'd play rhyming games and word games. We played hop-scotch... and "jacks" with golf balls (jacks, of course, being small steel pieces you picked up with one hand... and put in the other hand... in-between the bounce of a ball).

We would live in that house until all the kids had grown up. Dad was now in a partnership as an executive with a construction company. He worked long, long hours. His office was his car much of the time. And there were five kids, now, in that big ole glorious red-brick home.

I went to 2nd grade at West Nichols Hills Elementary School, then from 3rd through 8th grades at Christ the King Parochial School. We kids walked or rode our bikes the one mile to and from school on most days. I was in Girl Scouts and went to "camp" one summer at Red Rock Girl Scout Camp for a week. I took tap dance classes and two years of piano lessons. I played viola in the school orchestra class.

Our family would always take vacations in the summer... even if it was only to one or the other of our grand-parents' houses. Christmas, Easter, or summer time... we made trips back to Nebraska. I remember Grandma Wolfe's homemade breads and cinnamon rolls waiting for us on arrival. There was always canned pickles and home grown vegetables on the table... and sometimes home made ice cream. Mom and Dad kept close ties to family and to the friends that they had made over the years.

For 9th grade, I went to McGuinness High School for the first half year, then Wally and I tranferred to John Marshall High School. If I remember correctly, Wally was trying to grow his hair long like the new fashion was becoming... after the Beatles and the explosion of rock 'n roll music... and the school insisted that he cut it. Mom let us decide if we would transfer... but we both would have to go to the same school. I had been hurt by my boy friend who was the star football player... and so, transferring was fine with me.

Truth be told... I was a pretty smart student, but I hated the games that went on... growing up as a teenager. I wanted to go steady with someone just so I didn't have to play the dating game... you know... "who do you like?" "what did you do?" "how much money did he spend?" and "you didn't even kiss him good night?" And, heck... I couldn't picture myself marrying a one of them. I was giving serious thought to moving out of Oklahoma.

I had thought of myself as a writer since 2nd grade when I discovered that I loved words. I really loved words. I got a dollar as an award in 4th grade for perfect scores on spelling tests... and tried to give the dollar back to Mrs. Cooper... I had missed one word on one test... but she let me keep it for honesty. The next year I submitted a poem in some state school contest, and lost... to Cindy Green. It was a hard blow... after all... I was a real writer.

There was a big world out there that I needed to discover... if I was ever to be any kind of a writer. Writers... are world-wise... know things... discover the secrets of life and of being human... and are able to affect people through their words and the clarity of their understanding. So... I needed to discover more than Oklahoma if I was going to be a real writer. And... I needed to really... really... know what love was. Anything less than real love... wasn't going to do for me. As soon as I could... I would leave.

During my high school years, the university protests and anti-war demonstrations began happening. It all... was pretty confusing to me. It was hard to break the pattern of the... " do as you are told because someone knows better than you" mentality. But, some of the guys at school were being drafted by the army... and the desperation in the air was palpable. It was a situation where all casual teeny bopper concerns dropped off of the screen.

There had been groups at my school who made caravans to demonstrations... but I had thought to myself... "who wants to get beat up?" Then... four students were killed on the school campus at Kent State in Ohio. I hadn't been really sure WHO was right about all this ruckus... but after "Kent State"... I now knew with certainty who was WRONG. It changed me forever.

And... change was indeed the order of the day. Where girls had once "ratted" their hair into "bouffant" hair styles, wore dresses and thigh-high nylon hose on garter belts... and bras and lots of face make-up... they were now going "natural." Girls could NOT wear slacks to school when I was growing up, and dresses had to be just above the knee. Even "granny" dresses were banned. But... change was a'comin.

I graduated from high school. I went through a lot of changes... trying to find where I wanted to really be. I still wanted terribly to travel and live in distant places and meet new people. But, the real world was creeping in... and I was having to compromise all of my hopes and dreams. It was rough.

I met George Sefcik one night and he insisted that I listen to him play his songs. Turned out that he was a very good musician and song-writer. We hit it off and had a relationship for several years... living in Las Vegas, Nevada... then, North Lake Tahoe, California. I learned some real survival skills from George. We had jobs... and we had some fun, too.

We returned to Oklahoma and lived on an old farmstead north of Norman, OK- that my sister Carolyn's ex-husband had once lived on... that was owned by a professor at OU. We paid rent by working for him doing house and yard work. We tried to start a little restaurant on Campus Corner in Norman, which fizzled. George worked at Little Caesar's Pizza... shaved his beard... cut his hair... and everything... to get work.

George had a close friend who had worked one summer on a canning ship out of Alaska... and made good money at it. He decided to give it a shot. He drove (with our St. Bernard dog named "Boss") to Seattle, Washington... sold the car and bought passage on a shipping barge to Homer, Alaska... was given a car with no windshield, in which he drove to Mt. Denali in N. Alaska. He got a job as a cook in the employees' kitchen, and saved up his money. He met a trapper who had come in from "the bush" and George paid him to teach him to live in the wild.

George then went south and found a small cabin to rent on a lot in downtown Anchorage. The owner lived in Homer, and George arranged a deal to be the property manager for the two-story duplex and the two cabins on the property. He also worked as a cook in one of the near-by hotels. He sent me plane tickets to come up. When I arrived, he gave me a diamond ring.

Our cabin was on a difficult property that only lost money. The duplex shared the heat from an old oil-heater (about $600 a month in the winter) and the taxes were $5,000 a year, as it was a commercial area. You couldn't make enough in rent earnings to pay for it. The owner was going to shut down the entire property... for good.

We worked out a deal with him to try to save the property... and our home. If he would give us two months free rent, we would find a way to make the property work. He agreed. We tossed some ideas around... and settled on opening a hostel. We set to work making bunks from scrap lumber, upholstery remnants and stuffing... and shopped at thrift stores for blankets, sheets, towels, and kitchen supplies. And... in a month we hung out our shingle.

When the two-month date arrived... we paid Noel, our landlord, $1,000 for property rent. We had done it. Turns out, housing was hard to get in Anchorage and people were living in the shelters even when they had jobs. Some had come to Alaska and couldn't get jobs because they had no address. We solved everyone's problems... including our own.

We were visited by the crew that puts out the yearly "Bicycler's Handbook" and they listed our hostel in their next publication. We began having clients from around the world. Mountain climbers would call from the airport, George would pick them up in our van, and we would give them one of the two "private" rooms that had locks. We got several thank-you letters from these people, who said they would always remember their enjoyable stay at our hostel.

Noah was born on October 11, 1988 -- the day of the first snowfall in Anchorage that year. It was a natural birth and I nursed him for two years. He never had a baby bottle. I had studied mid-wivery and read several of the excellent La Leche League books on natural child rearing, and I was as good a mother as I could be.

George and I had a break-up, and I moved out of the hostel. I lived for two more years in Anchorage, then moved back to Oklahoma. It was a struggle supporting a child on my own, and yet... I wasn't finding any men who I cared to marry. I simply got used to being on my own... and I managed. I had several different jobs, one of which was a retail manager, and another as a Records Manager for an insurance company.

As Records Manager I had a room of files that renewed every year, and which had been somewhat mis-managed. Some days you couldn't find anything. I set about auditting. It took months, as I did it concurrent with normal records duties. It damaged my arms and shoulders eventually. I woke up one morning and couldn't even brush my teeth. I was in a bad way. It took a year to recover some strength, and I began school to learn computers.

So, now... I knew basic web design but couldn't find work doing it. I began organizing my writing, spending long hours doing the composing that I'd never before had the time or concentration to really do. I created a website to post my work and began trying to get it published.

Well, it has been a "no go." I've struck out on several ventures to try to start up a home business with computer work. I taught myself video captioning... where you add Closed Captions to videos... and I still hope that it might "pan out" to give me a livable income. You see, once you add captions to a video... it is translatable to other languages... and its text is searchable in search engines and bots. EVERY meaningful video should have captions.

Noah has now become a man... a very nice man at that... and is putting himself through college seeking a masters in Business and Economics. I no longer need to be a mama. I'm back to being... Linda.

Who knows... I may find the end of the rainbow... after all these years.

Love... to all.
Linda