Page 27 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active

enjoy doing farm chores. During some of these chores, I learned that Mother
Nature can sometimes be cruel and even more logical than humans. I watched a
500-pound sow have a litter of ten piglets, and within days she identified the runts
of the litter and got them in a corner and laid on them. She was not going to allow

them to live and, thereby, reduce the continued growth of the strong survivors.
Also, a rancher would not breed a prized horse numerous times like some people
do who believe it is a blessing to have many children with no regard for the
mother.

As far as religion goes, I was baptized as a Lutheran when I was two years old on
October 2, 1940. (Sue’s birthday – what a coincidence!) As a young adult, I
attended a Methodist college but later became a Jehovah’s Witness and then a

Roman Catholic. Afterwards, I became an Episcopalian, then an Anglican, and
finally went back to being a Lutheran again. Wherever I lived, that was the church
I attended and the religion I practiced. My first experience with construction was
helping to build a Jehovah’s Witness hall. My first sales assignment, at age 13 or
14, was to knock on doors and push Awake and Watchtower magazines, Jehovah’s
Witness literature. Later, I also did a little preaching in the pulpit. I read and

studied a lot about Judaism because it stressed the importance of family bonding.
What a concept!

The time came when I had to leave Steve and Alma Jurnic’s farm to go and live
with the Grace and Louis Rios family. Grace was Alma’s daughter. They had a
daughter, Angela, whom they adopted at birth; she was about four years old then. It
was decided that my sister, Betty, would be a good playmate for Angela, so she

joined me at the Rios house. Grace was not physically abusive like her mother but
did inflict emotional and mental intimidation on Betty. She played the “You are
inferior to Angela” game. We were all constantly reminded that we were “white
trash,” “low lives” and “scum.” Grace would force food down Betty’s throat until
she would throw up. She reminded Betty all the time that she was doing her a

favor.

Grace was a cosmetologist and operated a beauty shop out of the basement of her
house. When her husband, Louis, died, she sold the house and moved to Webster
Groves, Missouri, and bought a different house and set up another beauty shop
near the high school.

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