When I hear the word tangerine I either think of Christmas and those wooden boxes of the fruit, or this song by the legendary band Led Zeppelin. Such a great tune. Lately there’s been a new tangerine on the block. Tangerine bank, formerly ING Direct Canada, is expanding rapidly. Recently they have become the
In early 1947, Pa was lying incapacitated in a Texas hospital. In order to be near him, Ma packed up in a hurry all her belongings, including me and Doris not quite potty-trained, and moved back to the United States — with two stowaways in her belly besides ... Twins!
On April 18, 1947 I turned a year old, “big” sister Doris 2.5 years old, and Ma 25.8 years old … her hands full and her belly too. She was expecting but NOT twins! Nonetheless, June 21st, 1947 they popped out headfirst to greet everyone, ready or not. Fourteen months my juniors, these twins — darling though they were, a novelty, and an attention-getter — quadrupled Ma’s handful during her time of crisis.
To lighten pressures, Pa’s first wife Eva divorced him Oct. 30, 1944 — a month before my parents’ first child Doris was born November 27 (Thanksgiving Day), 1944. Now Pa no longer had to fear being tossed in jail for bigamy. This lightened my parents’ load immensely! No longer polygamists, except in belief, now they lived in the United States without worries of prosecution. It was persecution they had to worry about from then on, being Mormon fundamentalists.
As mentioned earlier, before my parents left Mexico, they turned over to Grandfather and Grandmother LeBaron the land they had bought there in Galeana, Chihuahua — land Pa bought in Ma’s name as she was born in Mexico.
Heretofore unnable to afford to move out of mainstream-Mormon Colonia Juarez, now, thanks to my parents, in 1944 my maternal grandparents were able to finally leave their homestead of 20 years, leaving along with it the many years of rejection they’d suffered and halfway survived in the Mormon colonies.
Settling on Ma and Pa’s “ejido,” my scrabble-farming grandparents and their children who still remained at home began building a whole new life and world. It was indeed a struggle. (You shall hear how they fared in Mexico down past the Rio Grande!) But The Mexico LeBarons (Dayer, Maud, their kids, and extended family) at long last had escaped the rejection and ostracism they’d painfully endured while living in the mainstream Mormon townsites.
Once Mother’s brothers born in Mexico (Ervil, Floren, and Verlan) reached the age they could each own a “parcela” (i.e., government land parcelled out to Mexican citizens to homestead on), they acquired surrounding pieces of property that joined the land my father had bought and registered in American-Mexican Ma’s name. That’s how “Colonia LeBaron” came to be … how it got its start! Many pieces/parcelas came together to make this pie.
By the time my family, “the Spencers,” moved back to Mexico in August 1960, Pa had turned sixty-five, Ma thirty-nine, and I fourteen. Ma’s pa, Grandpa Dayer, died nine years earlier so of Ma’s parents only my Gramma Maud remained. (Born in 1892, Gramma was but three years older than Pa. Just thought you’d like to know!)
Given this bit of backstory, you now know how, when my parents returned to their agrarian Chihuahuan desert home now called Colonia LeBaron, Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico, they “landed” on property they already owned. It was within walking distance of Gramma — though Pa and Gramma didn’t get along so we didn’t see much of her at our house. But some of Mother’s brothers and extended family homesteading in Mexico also lived near us, including Uncle’s Joel, Ervil, Floren, Verlan, their wives and children, and my Aunt Lucinda’s three children.
Soon after my Ma’s repatriating to Mexico, the land of her nativity, Ma and Pa bought another piece of property in her name* “The Galeana Springs.” It was located within a few miles of our homestead in Colonia LeBaron and had a natural running spring on it!
Once back in Mexico on her Motherland, Ma shed joyful tears, crying, “It’s so wonderful to finally be back with my family again — back home where I belong in Old Mexico with my kids and Pa … on our own ‘ranchito’ !”
*My pa, being an American, wasn’t allowed to own real estate in Mexico. Ma had dual citizenship, having been born in Mexico in 1921 of American parents; therefore, she could own property in Old Mexico.
We left off in “Part 26: More Memories of My Mom Esther LeBaron Spencer” with me questioning my mom about her early years. ​As I continued to query Mommy about her life and how she met and married Poppy, she moaned: “I NEVER wanted to leave my family and Old Mexico. But yer pa wasn’t allowed to make a livin’ in Mexico, being a US citizen. By marryin’ him, I was forced to live in “The States” … far from my family for thirteen years!!
“I was always homesick for my family in Mexico. Yer pa knew this so his favorite song was, ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.’ (See: https://youtu.be/TEHnzFC7M9A ) He would tear up when I played it for him on the piano … or sang it to him while accompanyin’ myself on the guitar.”
Dad kept his word to Mum. Soon as he turned sixty-five and could retire with full Social Security and Veterans Pension benefits, he moved Mum back to Mexico. We eleven kids went along for the ride!
One more stowaway sneaked along too … hidden in Mum’s belly! Well, everyone knows it’s cheaper by the dozen. At least that’s what Mumma always told everyone. US dollars went further especially back then– if you lived in Old Mexico as opposed to the United States.
So in August of 1960, my family returned to Old Mexico to settle in Colonia LeBaron, Chihuahua on their homestead my grandfather and grandmother had continued to build and enlarge upon on land Dad bought in 1944. Dad and Mum turned their “parcela“ over to my grandparents Dayer and Maud LeBaron in 1947 when they decided to take their budding family and move back to the US.
Grandpa Dayer and Grandma Maud could never afford to move out of Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. But once Dad married Mum (secretly) on Feb. 17, 1944 as a plural wife,* he’d had to “Get the hell out of Dodge:” ** Moving to old Mexico to live near my mother’s family was the perfect “get away” hideout for my parents for about three years — just long enough for me and my older sister to be born in Chihuahua, Mexico.
My parents’ days living in Old Mexico ended in early 1947 when Daddy was involved in a devastating near-death incident: While working to repair a flour mill in Colonia Dublan, Mexico, his leg accidentally slipped, fell into the mill’s grain grinder, and was badly chewed up before he could regain balance. Being a veteran of World War I, Father was taken to the Veterans’ hospital in El Paso, Texas where he remained for nearly three months while doctors and nurses struggled day and night to save and repair his leg so he could walk again.
Their dedicated efforts and peoples’ prayers paid off. Daddy’s leg was not only saved but he was able to walk on it. However, the immense amount of scar tissue in the damaged leg was to hurt him for the rest of his life — or the next 18 years. Poor Daddy!
This excruciating pain didn’t slow down the industrious hard worker that he was. But I’m sure it added to his temper already compromised by aging, physical pain from his bad back, arthritic pains, and post-traumatic-stress issues brought on by his World War I Army Service. Add to that his emotional pain that included loss of his first wife Eva and their 11 children, and my mumma’s poor housekeeping and cooking, and you’ve got a walking volcano that could errupt at any moment!
Nonetheless, this stalwart, dedicated, religious man, my papa, never gave up for a moment! He hung in there, holding fast to his beliefs and values till the end when, on April 18, 1965, a heart attack took him precipitated by an incident in late 1964 some like to call a “work accident.” (More on that in my upcoming book.)
*They were married by the Mormon fundamentalist leader Joseph W. Musser. This was kept a great secret: Polygamy was illegal and so was Musser’s performing such marriages. (See: Joseph White Musser: Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_White_Musser)
** Daddy told me he had to flee with Mama to live in old Mexico because his first wife Eva, a mainstream Mormon, had created a huge public stink and gotten him in trouble with the law and LDS church for taking a plural wife and becoming a Mormon fundamentalist. Can you blame her? (See my previous writings on this in blogs about my father and Mother.)
So, in 1944 Daddy sold in a hurry — at a loss — his belongings in Arizona and bought cheap land — a parcela — in Chihuahua, Mexico, not far from Colonia Juarez where Mama grew up. But he had to work in the United States to earn a living. It was illegal for Americans to earn a wage in Mexico — part of Mexico’s efforts not to lose more of their land to the USA — as they had in the war of 1846. Mexican–American War – Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican–American_War)
*NOTE: I’ve edited and rewritten parts of the 26-blog “Part 19” series. I have presently broken this rewritten and reposted series into two different parts consisting of 13 blogs each. (“Part 19: A–M” was recently posted.)
This blog, “Part 19: N–Z,” is the second half of the 26-blog series “Part 19: A–Z.” (Also, I’ve individually posted each blog in this grouped series of 26 blogs.)
I left off saying in “My Memoir: Part 19-M — Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And More Perils of Polygamy” that once I was married off as an adolescent into Bill’s polygamous household, I desperately needed my parent’s love, advice, and support. Was so lonely for my family. But I was not allowed to visit them.
This tripled the loneliness I felt as a 16-year-old newlywed married to a man ten years my senior with whom I was so in love but who was usually vacant in my life and even less often in my bed. When Bill wasn’t with his other two wives or someone else, he was with my Uncle Ervil … or some other man?
Having more than one wife and more than one household assures a polygamist his wives can’t usually keep tabs on whom he is with or where he is when he’s not with them — just one advantage to polygamy — especially if the husband is a rover living a double life — like Bill.
To make matters worse, it was as though Bill and Ervil were joined at the hip. If they weren’t together writing religious pamphlets, or on a “missionary trip,” or visiting, preaching to cult members and investigators, they found other “urgent” reasons to “get out of Dodge,” dodge the bullets and be together — all in the name of “doing church business” and “building up the kingdom of God.”
Ervil was like one of Bill’s wives.* As I said, the two were attached at the hips “doing missionary work”* — sharing the same bed when out of town. And remember, these two polygamists were used to having sex at least once every night and possibly during the morning or daytime too, given their many wives (and boyfriends?). So I can only wonder what went on “undercover” when they were suddenly without their habitual sexual partners.
Given the above circumstances, and their belief that masturbation was a mortal sin, imagine how “hard UP” (pun intended) these Mormon fundamentalist “Saints” were for sex during their days and sometimes weeks of being away from home “Doing the Lord’s work” to convert new recruits so as to bring more tithing money into the church coffers — money that mostly ended up in Ervil’s and Bill’s back pockets to support themselves and their humongous families.
After Bill left Joel and Ervil’s “Church,” Ervil took Dan Jordan “on” as his right-hand man. My Aunt Delfina, Ervil’s first wife, said Dan was Ervil’s “wife” because he spent more time with Dan than with his wives!
*”Doing missionary work” was the common catchphrase and smokescreen that covered up and justified everything in the cult. It made sinners look like saints in the eyes of the “true believers.” (But I know now not to believe everything I see or am told!)
Excellent expose by renowned speaker and Author of “Combatting Cult Mind Control,” and leader in recognizing brainwashing tactics — and much more!
It seems I got off onto a little bunny trail a few blogs back. It’s high time we backtrack — get back to where Uncle Ervil and my parents were manipulating my love life in the name of polygamy to get me married off to “Billy” — back to where, in July of 1963, my sixteen-year-old-self was in the process of being pawned off in a prearranged marriage to ten-years-my-senior William Preston Tucker (leader of the infamous French missionaries excommunicated from the LDS/ Mormon church around 1958).
Since Uncle Ervil wasn’t able to do anything about his sister/my mom throwing a jackhammer into his plans to trade me to Homer Babbitt for land, Ervil manipulated another of his nieces into marrying Babbitt in my place.
Yes, smooth-talking, scrupleless Uncle Ervil soon had one of his brother Wesley’s daughters, my red-haired sixteen-year-old cousin Jenny Lou LeBaron married to Homer. Poor Jenny! At the time, she was only visiting the LeBaron colony. But visiting the LeBaron colony was dangerous. She ended up homesteading as forty-three-year-old Babbitt’s polygamous bride. Her parents weren’t by her side to protect her from her uncle Ervil’s revelations and manipulations!
My parents “protected” me by betraying me! They had raised me to believe I could trust them impeccably because they were Saints. No, they were frauds. For years, they regularly snuck into and read my private diaries unbeknownst to me. Then discussed among themselves my thoughts and business meant for my eyes only. (I found this out many years after-the-fact.)
So they not only knew every personal thought that went on in my adolescent brain (No wonder they had become so down on me!), but also, inadvertently, during their daily entertainment, learned of Ervil’s devious plans to marry me to Homer Babbitt behind their backs!
That’s how my parents got the bright/”bride” idea to turn around, themselves, and manipulate my love-life and who I was to marry! They boggled Ervil’s plans to barter me to Babbit by replacing them with their own plans to barter me to Bill.
After all, I had written in my journal, “Bill Tucker is the man I’m in love with, not Homer!” There was a selfish method to my parents’ madness: It brought far more prestige to them to have me married to Bill rather than to Babbit. I don’t know which was worse for me in the end! (I was so in love with Bill but he shattered ‘n’ battered me. Kind Babbit would’ve built me up, appreciated, and loved me.)
Since Jenny’s parents weren’t around to snoop into her diaries, Ervil won the second time around. He got Jenny married to Homer in a heartbeat. Then set to work to convince his bosom-buddy Billy to comply with my parents’ wishes that he marry me.
(Ervil had quickly seen how Bill’s marrying me would work for him. For one thing, Homer wouldn’t wonder why I hadn’t ended up marrying him after all Ervil’s wheelings and dealings to have him marry me!)
As I said previously, my sixteen-year-old first cousin Jenny Lou LeBaron’s parents weren’t around to snoop into her private diaries. So my uncle Ervil LeBaron won the second time around in his efforts to get Homer Babbitt a child bride in exchange for a parcel of his land.
After getting Jenny married to Homer, he set to work to convince his bosom-buddy Billy Tucker to follow through with marrying me — the way my parents wanted him to.
Let’s back up a bit. At first, Ervil (one of Mother’s younger brothers) didn’t know what hit when he found I was suddenly being given away to Billy! Like how was he, Ervil, going to explain to Homer that, despite the revelations he got that I was supposed to marry him, Homer, his sister Esther (my mother) had her own “revelation” I was supposed to marry Billy/William Preston Tucker?
But, Ervil, as usual, wormed out of his having promised me to Homer by coming up with a new revelation for Homer as to whom he was to marry when the first “revelation” fell through.
Nonetheless, “Evil ErVIL” was blindsided in his own shenanigans and misuse of power because he had no idea my parents knew about his secret attempt to marry me off to Homer Babbitt behind their back! I had no idea my parents knew about it either. I found that out far down the line — after I was already Bill’s concubine.
So, despite Ervil’s efforts to keep “the adversary” (the devil) from finding out about his plans, lo and behold, “the adversary” — in the name of my parents — did find out about the self-proclaimed-profit Ervil’s latest priestcraft — in a most unexpected way. But Mother, with Daddy’s help, had me convinced it was “through a dream — a revelation” she “came to know” I was supposed to marry Bill Tucker!
As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had not told my parents what Uncle Ervil LeBaron (The Second Grand Head in the Priesthood of the LeBaron cult) was directing me to do, because Uncle Ervil, who practically stood as God to the people, had told me, “God doesn’t want your parents to know till you’re ALREADY married to Homer.”
“Let’s keep this a secret between me, you, and Homer,” Uncle Ervil had adamantly whispered to me. “We don’t want “the adversary” to get wind of what’s going on here and try to stop God’s work — God’s desire you marry Homer to help build up His kingdom on earth.” (Replace “God” with “Ervil.”)
Getting back to my being in the throes of “The First Grand Head” of the cult, my uncle Ervil LeBaron and his having a jackhammer thrown into his “perfect“ plans to marry me off to his pal, Homer (behind my parents’ back) let me give you a little pertinent backstory:
Mother and her siblings, including Ervil, had grown up with Homer Babbitt in the Mormon colonies in Colonia Juarez, Mexico. Timid blond-haired, blue-eyed Homer was around Momma’s age; that is, 26 years older than I. Extremely shy, unassuming, and quiet, he blushed often, highlighting his already red pockmarked face and neck deeply scarred from acne and boils. Sadly, the name “Homer” (Homely) fit him.
But he was a sweet, sensitive, kind, conscientious, considerate gentleman — with money. Quite rare in my neck of the woods. Barely converted from the LDS church to the LeBaron cult and polygamy, Homer was, in marrying me as his plural wife, trying to please both God and his childhood Mormon pal Ervil.
Even so, as I partly related earlier, my parents got busy post haste to covertly thwart Ervil’s plans to barter me off to Babbitt, by going to Bill, behind my back, and exclaiming, “If you want to marry Beulah, right now is your chance. Tomorrow will be too late!”
But Bill, always the diplomat, countered with, “Beulah is too young. I need to wait a couple more years. I don’t have money to support another wife right now. Can’t even afford to take her on a honeymoon.”
He was REALLY hedging! Mormon fundamentalist Men usually did not take their plural wives on a honeymoon! There was enough trouble in Bedlam (Plyg Town) without them honeymooning each new plural wife. Furthermore, most polygamists couldn’t afford their first wife and her herd of up to possibly twenty-six kids, let alone a honeymoon for each new wife added to the harem.
And new wives meant ultimately even more kids–more expense and time: Each new wife stretched further and further the husband and father from his time and money. In the end, it was mostly the wives and children left to bear the brunt of this hapless, mindless lifestyle.
But true-believing, brainwashed Daddy nevertheless bribed Bill: “How’s about I help you out? I’ll give you some money … more than enough to take my favorite daughter on a honeymoon for a week. How’d that be?“
That money sounded good to penniless-pauper Bill. He had to rely too much on the purse strings of his first wife Marilyn (Her parents sent her money regularly from “The States”) in order to keep his family afloat in the LeBaron colony while he worked to get his chicken business off the ground, including a chicken packing plant for “pollos”/friers.
But wouldn’t you know, it was Ervil finding out about my parents trying to arrange my marriage to Bill that cemented the deal. More on “the deal” in the next blog.
My swollen-eyed Honeymoon photo, October 1963. We Honeymooned in a cheap hotel in Chihuahua City, Mexico — no screens on the windows but plenty of mosquitoes.
I had never traveled much past my own backyard, especially once we moved, when I was fourteen, to Chihuahua, Mexico to join the secluded wilderness LeBaron cult — “Zion.”
But when I was married off to twenty-six-year-old Bill Tucker in an arranged marriage (as I said in the last blog) Daddy gave Bill money to take me to Chihuahua City for a week’s Honeymoon.
I’m so touched Daddy did that because he was not well to do and was often mean to me, besides. But it seems he cared enough to twist Bill’s arm to take me on a Honeymoon — or desperately wanted to get me off his hands! It is more likely Daddy gave him the money in an effort to set up a little better deal for Bill at the start of our marriage because he felt guilty about having pawned me off onto Bill and his harem when Daddy knew Bill was out of work and couldn’t afford to support the two wives and five children he already had!!
Needless to say, Bill felt obligated to take me on a honeymoon. But he didn’t feel obligated to spend any of the money on me. And he didn’t! While in Chihuahua City, on our honeymoon, he took ME shopping to spend $ on his first wife Marilyn — money Daddy meant to be spent to help me get started in my new home because Bill said he couldn’t afford me!
Though, as a newlywedded teenager, I needed so many things to set up my new household, my new husband spent not a penny on me — other than for cheap lodgings for the both of us, restaurant meals he gobbled down, and gas for our automobile trip — a trip that (I realized years later), was mainly a business and pleasure trip for him: He met with boyfriends and with companies he was dealing with to get them to buy his fryers/pollos when they were ready to be beheaded, defeathered, and marketed.
When I married Bill, he and his two wives were in the process of starting a chicken business that would include a chicken-packing plant. Money to get the family business going would be mostly supplied by his first wife Marilyn’s dowery.
I realize now, Bill, having so recently come upon a little money of his own by way of my father, wanted to ingratiate himself with his jealous 31-year-old Marilyn (She was about five years older than he, 15 years older than I) for having taken me on as a third wife against her will — though she was largely financing his family and their upstart chicken business!!
Can you imagine how it hurt 16-year-old-child-bride me (who knew nothing about his family) to be left alone for an hour standing on the sidelines of my own Honeymoon watching the man I loved lovingly look for and pick out a costly gift for his first wife’s upcoming thirty-second birthday — while totally ignoring me?
It hurt SO to be left out in the cold on my own honeymoon as I stood in the background watching the foreground where the man I just married neglected me to lovingly look for and pick out an extravagant gift for his “old” wife Marilyn’s upcoming 32nd birthday. He not only ignored me. He bought me “nada.” No fun! Welcome to Polygamy 101.
I learned later that jealous Marilyn, about fifteen years my senior, was exceedingly upset Bill married me despite her ardent protests! Then he added kerosene to the coals: He took me (once again despite her’s and the SECOND wife’s avid protests) on a Honeymoon to Chihuahua City, a-few-hours drive away.
Taking me on a honeymoon for a week must’ve left narcissistic Billy feeling at least a little queasy: His first wife Marilyn and his favorite wife Lolita were home alone and horny, grieving his honeymooning and spooning child-bride me.
Was he showing them they were not enough? Or that I was too good a package to pass up? Bill could always pass his actions off onto: “Polygamy –“The Law of Plural Marriage” –comes first and foremost … above all else!”
Mormon fundamentalists believe building up the kingdom of God is all that matters. More wives means bringing more little spirits into good Mormon fundamentalist homes to build God’s work and combat Satan’s efforts to overcome Him.
Because Marilyn held and CONTROLLED the family purse strings, Bill wanted to make strides with her. So, though it was my honeymoon, he bought her an extravagant present on my time that actually came from his own money — the money Daddy gave him for me!
I was rudely learning that all this was par for the course in polygamous marriages. I wasn’t his only love and consideration nor concern. I had to share him — even on my honeymoon.
To top it off, the second day there, without warning, Bill heartlessly left me alone out in the car on the street for five hours with nothing to do!! Not even a radio to listen to — sans warning that he would be gone anywhere nearly so long — while he “did business and missionary work” (in the missionary position?) with a buddy or two:
“I can’t have you at the meeting. These men have met Marilyn. Can’t let them know I have more than one wife,” was his easy way out.
Next: Despite his promised seven-day Honeymoon, about five days in, he suddenly told me, again without my having any say in it: “We’re going home now. Need to cut our Honeymoon short. Must get back home to take care of business.” I think he mostly missed and was worried about his other two wives, was bored with me, wasn’t in love with me, and didn’t value freebie-me much … let alone care how I felt. What do you think?
We returned home within five days of what turned out to be, all-in-all, a stressful, rather uneventful honeymoon — except (brace yourself) lying in the lap of my sexy husband as he steered the vehicle toward home, I had my way with him. We are lucky Bill didn’t lose his way at the wheel as he came — and I lived to tell the story!
NOTE: If you wonder what Mormon fundamentalist cults believe, how they are brainwashed, and why members don’t often leave — aren’t able to escape these clans — listen to the following YouTube interviews:
“The sharing of stories broadens our outlook on life. People identify with and draw strength from reading about the struggles of others. Readers can ‘try on’ the life of the character/s in the story and see how they would have felt and reacted without having to suffer through the experience themselves.
They ‘become’ that protagonist, that main character, as they step into his shoes and walk through the difficulties he faces.”
I left off in the last blog saying that Bill promised me a seven-day Honeymoon; however, 4 1/2 days in he informed me: “We’re going home now. Need to cut this Honeymoon short … get back to take care of business.“
Apparently, having taken care of “business” with his boyfriends in Chihuahua City, there was little enticement to remain away from his two grieving, furious, jealous wives conniving at home as to how best to work in cahoots so as to deal with Bill and me. (Deal they did!)
While Bill’s old black Cadillac rocked, rattled, ‘n’ rolled as it sped toward our homestead Colonia LeBaron, I lay in my lover’s lap and “had my way with him” — ever so lucky my husband didn’t lose control of the wheel as he came. Adolescent me who didn’t drive didn’t see how close we “came” to diving over the cliff to Dover-heaven in sexual oblivion!
The car swerved back-and-forth, skidding dangerously a few times. But determined Billy managed to muster all he had to keep his Cad on the road while he exploded in ecstasy! My, what a man — what I cad! The Angels must’ve been watching over us (How embarrassing!) where angels fear to tread. Thereafter, tread marks left on the highway were all that remained to tell the tale of our ecstatic but erratic, “wreckless” ride.
Other than that, it was, for me, a pretty blissful but stressful and uneventful five-day honeymoon with hubby — except for some luscious restaurant meals, visiting Chihuahua City’s Museum of Art and other such — including Mexico’s Robin Hood and Mexican-war-hero Pancho Villa’s museum home. His elderly wife still lived there and lead us on the tour.
We then saw the hit movie, “El Sid.” I had seen so few movies in my life (maybe two or three?) I had to keep asking Bill what was said and what was going on. And, did I mention the mosquitoes buzzing in, out, and all about as we slept, biting me on both eyelids just in time for our Honeymoon photos?
You shall hear, I fear, in my upcoming book, more about Bill’s and my Honeymoon — my initiation “into” Bill’s harem — and he into me. I promise! Can hardly wait to tell you this “herstory-history.”
Left to right: Me, hubby Billy, 1st wife “Overlord” Marilyn, 2nd wife Lolita–both wearing makeup; not I. ‘Twas against our religion.
My third trip in the five-and-a-half years since my family moved to Colonia LeBaron, Chihuahua, Mexico in 1960–including my honeymoon–was once again back to Chihuahua City, Mexico when I was nineteen. It happened only because I approached Bill pleading:
“Please! Since Daddy just died and I’m grieving, shouldn’t I be the one to go on this trip with you? You’ve taken the other two wives on lots of trips; yet, have never taken me anywhere except to Chihuahua on our honeymoon.”
Bill relented. But it was only a one-day-one-night business trip with him and one of his buddies, Bruce Wakeham, who drove us there and back in the cab of his bouncing gray pickup truck — the three of us crammed together like sardines, Bill between Bruce and me.
Just because Bill took me on what I thought would be a romantic trip where we might finally do some special bonding, it didn’t mean he had to make love to me that night or even talk to me … or anything else. And he didn’t! He barely tolerated me. Once at the Wakeham’s home, he ignored me altogether and, without a kiss or a goodbye, took off with Bruce, leaving me behind with Bruce’s first wife Juna. Tears!!
That night, when we went to bed, more tears and disappointment: Bill rolled over and turned his back on me, refusing my attempts to make love. Knowing what I know now about Bill and his buddies, I suspect Bill didn’t do his usual three-minute screw then fall asleep on me, when it was my night to be with him–though he loved how well he fit in me–because he was afraid Bruce would know … even though we were in bed undercover in the dead of night.
Was he afraid Bruce would be jealous? There were no curtains on the bedroom windows if you can believe it! But either way you “peek” at it, I was screwed — screwed over big-time by two-timing big-Plyg Billy! You’ll see more of what I mean in my next blog.
I left off in “My Memoir: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And Polygamy On-The-Down-Low, Part 19-U” remarking that when my husband Bill Tucker and I went to bed, our one night we spent in Chihuahua City, I suffered the usual tears and disappointments of my concubinage with this man I’d experienced since the day I married him at age sixteen — two-and-a-half years earlier.
But even when I was alone in bed with him, he didn’t show any love toward me, let alone some sympathy for my father having just died! Instead, he hadn’t given me any attention during the whole twenty-four-hour trip; now he simply rolled over, turned his back on me, and refused my attempts to make love.
Was this hot-blooded sex-fiend punishing me for asking to go on a trip with him, though this night would have been another wife’s turn– and his taking me on this trip was causing his other two wives further grief and jealousy…which meant more trouble for him when he got home? That never mattered when he took his other two wives on trips when it was my turn to spend the night with him!
Knowing what I know now about Bill and his buddies, I suspect Bill — though he loved how well he fit in me — didn’t do his usual three-minute screw, like he always did when it was my night to be with him (which was every third night, if he was in town) then fall asleep on top of me– his stocky, overweight body crushing my petite frame– because he was afraid Bruce would know — even though we were undercover in bed in the dead of night!
To repeat what I wrote in the previous blog, maybe Bill was afraid Bruce would be jealous: There were no curtains on the bedroom windows! Either way you “peek,” I was screwed — screwed over big-time by two-timing-gay-Plyg Billy!
Well, I’ll leave you in the dark no more: I believe this hot-blooded “Billy” had gone off and gotten it on with Brucey– maybe some other “Willy” too. So he’d created special bonding with Brucey, plus got his sexual juices expunged. Was also being careful not to cause jealousy in Bruce. This would ruin his and Bruce’s special just-built or just-renewed connection … if Brucey should come checking on Billy and catch his willy in me.
I say this based on a trip I managed to go on with Bill to Guadalajara, Mexico in 1964, about a year earlier. I was barely eighteen then. There I witnessed, in a roundabout way, Billy and his buddy Stephen do this very thing I described above. It took place at Mariachi Square, famous the world over among homosexuals–at least back then–as a gathering place.
Being an adolescent eighteen year old, poorly educated, brainwashed, backward, duped, and dumb, I had no idea what the hell was going on when, while visiting Guadalajara, Mexico in 1964 with my twenty-eight-year-old handsome husband Billy Tucker, I unwittingly witnessed him and his horn-rimmed buddy Stephen Silver making “a connection” — a hit — at the Mariachi Square — famous the world over as a gathering place for homosexual men … I learned years later.
Back then I believed on-the-down-low Bill’s bull when he told me he and his pal Steve would be out late “doing missionary work.” (In the missionary position?)
Later that night, I didn’t see them in action. I heard them in action — After Bill had left me at Stephen Silver’s home with Stephen’s two wives (one of them my sister) so he could, as he told me, “go back and rescue Stephen from the hotbed of bad influences at Mariachi Square.“
That evening, long after retiring, I was awakened by weird midnight noises wafting up to my loft above from the living room below, fifty feet away … strange, odd animal expletives, guttural grunts, groans; sensuous heavy breathing. How heedless, how hedonistic of Bill and Steve to believe their women were fast asleep or wouldn’t hear. I could swear their “little head” was doing the thinking that night!!
At the time, I was “asleep…couldn’t hear” when it came to being in the dark about Bill’s double/down-low life. He knew he could count on that: Homosexuality was in my blind spot. I didn’t even know the word existed, let alone what it meant — let alone that my own “saintly” Mormon husband and his best “buddy” — his old French missionary pal — were “one” … frauds!
Now wise, I realize those passionate sounds and other activities witnessed on that “trip” weren’t “doing missionary work:” Bill and Stephen brought home with them that night at least one of the gay guys they connected with at Guadalajara, Mexico’s Mariachi Square.
Much older and wiser now, I realize the weird things I witnessed on that Guadalajara, Mexico “trip” weren’t doing missionary work: My twenty-eight-year-old Mormon fundamentalist husband William Preston Tucker and his best buddy/lover Stephen Silver had brought home with them at least one gay guy they connected with at Mariachi Square that night.
Believing my idol Bill was on a pedestal — a total Mormon saint– my eighteen-year-old innocent, trusting self figured the noises wafting up from down below were Bill and his buddy trying with all their might to “get it up” … I mean, to put across the Scriptures to someone they had met while at Mariachi Square doing missionary work.
I thought they were working so “HARD” to put across the gospel concepts of Mormon fundamentalism and my uncle Joel’s “Church” — the only true church on earth — that strained noises would somehow escape! BUT That’s exactly what Bill and Steve knew their naïve women would believe. Doing missionary work was ever the cover for everything undercover in the cult.
When Bill came to bed around 3 AM that night, I approached my “HARD”-working husband to make love only to find him oddly drenched with sweat… and exhausted! It seemed so strange but I figured it was due to his strenuous efforts to preach the gospel to the new contact. So I only admired my husband all the more for his hard work!
I didn’t question because I didn’t know enough to question. I was so sure Bill was the perfect emblem of virtuousness and virtuosity– That was the image he pretentiously portrayed. Bill was the LeBaron cult’s idol: He could do no wrong … so we thought… and so many of them still think to this day.
What amazes me now is, despite the intense sexual spree Bill had obviously just finished that left him drenched with perspiration, when I approached him to make love (it never entering my mind what he just finished doing), he was still able, though barely, to roll his wasted sopping self on top of me, get it up, penetrate, and go at it again … only to finish within fifteen seconds!
Then my stocky heavy hunk whom I had been waiting and longing for all evening, fell fast asleep on top of me without a word or a kiss, his dead weight crushing my petite five-foot-two frame! More cries, grunts, and groans — but this time they weren’t coming from badass Billy! I was crushed … in more ways than one.
When my husband Bill came to bed around 3 AM, our first night in Guadalajara, Mexico, I approached him to make love, having no idea gay Billy and his beaus had barely finished a sexual rendezvous–NO idea such things existed. He liked to keep it that way.
I only knew I was crushed by his quick finish and even quicker falling asleep on top of me… crushed by the dead weight of his limp body I held in my arms as I struggled to breathe in between sobs while supporting his heavy muscular frame–about the only warmth I had felt from him the whole time there — or since I don’t know where. (So many times I would like to kill him now–were I not so civilized. Then I recall: He’s already dead.)
On my second day in Guadalajara with Bill, after touring some of its beautiful landmarks with Steve as our guide, Bill took me with them to eat at a swazzi French restaurant where apparently one of their handsome Mexican contacts worked as a Waiter.
Daring as ever, when this Waiter came to take our orders, Billy and Stephen spoke with him in French — using an odd pug-nosed accent! (They had learned fluent French in school and while on their Mormon French mission in the late 1950s.)
The heavy nasal twang amongst the three carried on into their Spanish conversation! I only knew a few words in Spanish. No French. But, as with other weird things I’d witnessed on this trip with these two Homo’s, I never quit wondering why they used that odd nasality. I’d never heard Bill nor Stephen speak like that before nor since…but I was never around them very much, either.
Eventually, my wondering about the strange things witnessed on this trip bore fruit. After I escaped the cult, became more educated and experienced, listened, watched, and read for answers–It helped that I had been around the block a few times too–I discovered, among other things, pug-nosed nasal speech was a secret code homosexuals used to connect.
The “connection” with the Waiter worked: That night, while climbing the loft to our bunk, Bill raised his voluminous voice and bellowed–so I would believe I was the guilty party (victimizing the victim):
“I”m not taking you anywhere else with me and Steve! I’m going to punish you for coming on this trip when I didn’t say you could! You just hopped a ride! So, for our next four nights here, you are to stay on your side of the bed. And DON’T touch me!”
Isn’t it odd: While hidden away in the big city where Billy was free to enjoy the homosexual spree, he didn’t want me … couldn’t USE me, is more like it. Narcissistic Billy’s punishing me was simply an excuse to save his sexual juices for the gay rendezvous!
But on the truck trip to and from Guadalajara, when there weren’t any gay guys but Steve to save his sex for, Bill had NO problem responding to my sexual advances — even though one of Stephen’s wives was also riding in the back of the truck with us — whichever one wasn’t sitting up front with Steve when Bill relinquished HIS envied spot to get some sleep so he could take the wheel next.
So, on our way back home to Colonia LeBaron, bisexual Bill’s punishment ended as quickly as it began! This sex addict was back to screwing my body then falling asleep on me immediately after his three-minute fuck wherein he took advantage of my nubile body and how well he fit … when he thought the other person in the back of the truck was asleep.
I was so in love with Bill and so bluffed by Bill and my Mormon fundamentalist indoctrination, I took whatever I could get whenever I could get it — which was never nearly enough nor ever often enough. All my baffled the mind knew for certain was marriage was not at all like I had been told it would be, let alone how I fantasized it would be since I was four years old.
18-year-old Beulah Stephany Spencer-LeBaron de Tucker with 28-year-old husband William Preston Tucker and our six-month-old Asenath Marie Tucker,
On our way back home to Colonia LeBaron, bisexual Bill’s punishment ended! He returned to pretending he was my loving husband taking advantage of how well he fit … if the other person in the back of the truck was probably asleep.
But how is it I ended up on this trip Bill hadn’t “specifically” said I could go on? I complained to my older sister Doris, Stephen’s plural wife, saying: “Bill still has not given me a definite answer as to whether or not I can go on the trip with him. Each time I ask him, he simply responds, ‘You can PROBABLY go. I’ll see.’ And we’re supposed to leave tomorrow!”
She quipped, “Well, the way to handle that is to have your suitcase packed so you can grab it and hop in the back of the truck just as the engine starts up and they’re about to Roll. I’ll be in the back of the truck to help you. Bill will be up in the cab with Stephen so you’ll be well on your way to Guadalajara and my house before Bill knows you’ve made up his mind for him!
“I’ll let you know what time they plan to leave in the morning. We’ll sure teach Bill to give you a definite answer in the future so you’ll know whether or not to get a babysitter and be packed and ready to go!”
As it turned out, I had my suitcase packed and was at the truck when Bill came to get in. Being concerned about how he looked to others, Bill put out his hand and graciously helped me get on the truck –along with my luggage. So he inadvertently gave me permission to go. His saying he didn’t simply showed lack of integrity –as did his blaming me for his own doing’s.
Day after day, as the time for Bill’s trip to Guadalajara had approached, he had left me up in the air … dangling. Didn’t bother to let me off the hook. Kept pretending he was going to take me with him when he really had no intentions (I now realize) of being with anyone but Stephen and the Gay life in Guadalajara.
Stephen, who had been living and working there for a while, had so raved about life in that city. But he had me believing he was raving about beautiful Guadalajara and its cultural life. Apparently, he never let on to anyone but Bill it was the Gay life there he was raving about!
Oddly enough, Bill was not taking either of his other two wives on this five-day trip. And it was definitely my turn, long since, to go on a trip with him! But as usual, once on the trip, Bill made sure I wouldn’t much enjoy it and wouldn’t be able to develop any intimacy with him.
Now I realize whenever he did not take one of his wives on a trip he was going on, it was because he wanted to be with a boyfriend — or alone in the dark fucking “bushes” in the park.
He didn’t want to be with me, as young, beautiful, and sexy as others said I was — “A ten on the ‘Richter’ scale,” according to my Artist brother-in-law Sigfried Widmar. “Any man would be proud to walk with you on his arm,” he added. Almost every Plyg in town wanted to!
But Bill did not need nor love me. Unless he could use women to his advantage, they were not his preference, I realize now. He was a Big Pretender–a charmer, a womanizer who said one thing, did another — An Opportunist who would tell a person anything they wanted to hear — such as “I love you.” How could you tell if he was lying? His lips were moving.
But Bill was further put off by me because I didn’t “bite”– didn’t respond when his lesbian wives tried to bring me into “the family” –even at Bill’s behest. I was totally naïve and unaware of what the advances of his wives meant. Didn’t know lesbianism existed. Even had I known, I would’ve believed it was a terrible sin. So it was nothing I would ever want to be involved in– if ONLY because I was not sexually attracted to women.
The whole five years I was with Bill, I didn’t know such things as menages a trois existed — far less that some families in Mormon Fundamentalism participated in threesomes and group sex behind closed doors. I mean very closed. Because it was very against our religion!
NOTE: I’ve renamed and reposted today’s blog, “Part 19: A-Z — Mom, Pop, Me, and the Perils of Polygamy,” because I’ve rewritten segments of it. Today’s post consists of “Pt 19: A-M” — to be followed next week by “Pt. 19: N-Z.” These 26 memoir blogs in my “Part 19” series exist as individual posts also.
~The following posts are largely grouped memoir blogs of experiences with my parents and others. It’s difficult to present one’s memoir in the form of separate blog posts. Bear with me till it all comes together — one way or another.
Other than her first six months in a polygamous marriage with my father (a married man with ten children and another on the way at the time she married him, he soon became monogamous: His first wife left him.) Mother could not/did not live polygamy again during her twenty-two years of marriage to my father. So I resent that she manipulated me into a harem — a life she couldn’t live herself. But what’s new?
She and Pa raised me to believe I would go to hell if I didn’t live polygamy — because Joseph Smith said so. Obviously, my parents expected their kids to do things they were unable to do themselves. Maybe they were trying to save us from going to hell when they couldn’t save themselves (?). Dream on!
So, when I was barely sixteen, still tied to Mummsy’s apron strings, and too young to know better or have any input, Mummsy, along with Pappy’s priestcraft, worked her witchcraft to arrange a polygamic marriage that dumped me into 26-year-old William Preston Tucker’s family; i.e., his harem. It was an arrangment that would bring glory to my parents’ — Bill Tucker was arguably the biggest catch in town.
To manipulate me, Mumms told me, “I had a revelation last night that showed me plain as day that you are supposed to marry William Preston Tucker.”
Years later I discovered her so-called “revelation” was she and Dad had secretly read my private diary wherein I stated Bill was the man I was in love with. (I learned a few years later at least half the town was in love with this alpha male, William Preston Tucker — Men and women! Mormon polygamy allows for mayhem!)
My parents had convinced me they were perfect saints. So it never entered my mind while I was away from home dutifully and conscientiously doing the job they got me into, starting at age fourteen — volunteer school teaching for the LeBaron colony — they were reading and discussing, unbeknownst to me, my hidden diary’s private daily thoughts — things I believed only I knew … personal things only I was supposed to know!!
I poured my heart and soul out in my diary. You could say I had “diarrhea/dia-ry’-a” of the mouth. While “running off at the mouth” kept me alive and sane, on the one hand, on the other hand, it kept my parents in a position that would practically devastate my life, in the end.
Since I recorded all my private thoughts and feelings, intruders into my personal diaries had perfect access to my mental processes, problems, plans, secret feelings about them and others — and you name it! Golly Gee!!
My brain might as well have been opened up for cons to covertly listen in on my private plans and thoughts so they could control me. I used my journals to cathart, “thought fart,” and otherwise wend my way through the LeBaron moron Mormon mess I dealt with as an adolescent coming of age in a foreign land and fanatic fundamentalist belief system.
And, wouldn’t you know, my Uncle Ervil LeBaron played his part in manipulating my life and turning it upside down too. I’ll take up with that in next week’s Blog.
Continuing with the story of my life being hijacked in the name of plural marriage, as I mentioned in my last blog, Mother’s brother, Ervil M. LeBaron, was in on the manipulation of my love-life too. (What’s new?! Whose life was he not in on? But of course, I didn’t know this, back then.)
As it turns out, Ervil LeBaron had time for everyone’s family but his own. This cunning con was too busy using and abusing others — all the new converts and you name it — under the highfalutin pretense of being “The Second Grand Head” of God’s church on earth.
His maneuvering and manipulating others to his own advantage was only outdone by his coercion and priestcraft when it came to pulling the wool over the eyes of the “lambs” and fleecing the newbie true-believing “Church of the Firstborn” sheep.
My Uncle “Evil Ervil” (ErVIL) was truly something else — in his heyday and depth of glory with all those trusting, true-believing followers and converts suddenly at his deceptive fingertips once his and his brother Joel LeBaron’s new “Church” began to take off in the late 1950s.
While Uncle ErVIL was manipulating my life by way of his priest craft, my parents — another set of controllers found wanting in the area of integrity — were secretly snooping into my personal Journal so able to control and manipulate my life also! Reading my diaries behind my back must’ve been the entertainment of the day for them in their collusion to eavesdrop on what I believed were my private thoughts!
But I can’t imagine their “entertainment” when they found Ervil, Mumma’s younger brother, had, behind my parents’ back, secretly bartered me off in marriage (in the name of God, revelation, and building up “His” kingdom) to married, old-man Homer Babbitt, Mum’s girlhood friend — in exchange for land!!
In my Journal entry of July 15, 1962, I wrote that Ervil had told me not to tell my parents about my upcoming marriage to Homer — “So the devil can’t interfere with God’s plans,” said he. I also wrote that I was not at ALL attracted to Homer Babbitt: When we kissed to cement our engagement to marry, it felt icky.
Homer’s kiss wasn’t much more than a peck on the lips … thank God. That was my first kiss ever! Oh dear and Heaven help us! It was also my first date ever — though hardly a kiss and barely a date. But no matter how Homer had kissed me, I would’ve gotten no pleasure whatsoever out of it because I had no feelings whatsoever for him. Only lots of anxiety.
I don’t recall doing anything else with this extremely shy, middle-aged stranger. I only recall that, to cement our coerced marriage vows, Uncle Ervil arranged for the rendezvous wherein Homer Babbitt and I secretly convened in his black Buick he’d skillfully hidden behind a secluded clump of mesquite bushes toward the outskirts of the small LeBaron scrabble colony. Situated in the Chihuahuan desert, in 1962 the cult was amply surrounded by cacti, mesquite, and other desert vegetation suitable for hiding in!
Heck! Here I am alone in the dark in a car with a middle-aged male Mormon stranger in an arranged marriage situation and this was the first time I’d ever been alone with a man! To think, thanks to my uncle ErVIL, it had to be in this bizarre, coerced, traumatic, unnatural setting — not romantic at all, despite the moonlit night. Fortunately and unfortunately, as it turns out, it was to be my first and final meeting with Ervil’s well-meaning but badly misused and abused “amigo,” Homer Babbitt.
“The Prophet Ervil said the Lord revealed to him we are supposed to be married in a couple of days. I’m to give him a piece of land because he got me you for my second wife so I can further build the work of God. So I want to know, do you agree to be my plural wife so I can enter into ‘the principle of celestial marriage’ to better serve God?”
I replied, “I agree to marry you because Uncle Ervil prophesied it was what God wanted me to do to help build up the kingdom of God on earth.”
After that “proposal,” so unmemorable for me was that secret evening rendezvous that all I pretty much recall is Homer then drove me back to the outskirts of my home and dropped me off where nobody would see nor hear his car coming and going.
I don’t remember anything else about that time with homely Homer, except that I didn’t feel good about it! The whole event was a bummer. It left me off-balance with anxious nausea in the pit of my troubled mind and nervous stomach. Some date, right?
I didn’t understand what was coming off nor going on with this marriage Uncle Ervil had suddenly arranged — ALL behind my parents’ back, on the spur of the moment, in the dead of day, in the name of God. It made me question whether there could really be a God.
For one thing, it wasn’t at all like I had fantasized — not at all how I had romanticized matrimony and meeting my future husband would be. Instead, I didn’t look forward to being Homer Babbitt’s wife/ plural wife. “Why did God want me to do something that seemed so unnatural,” is what I would have asked myself if I knew enough to ask questions.
The secretly arranged marriage my Uncle Ervil LeBaron had manipulated me into wasn’t at all like I had fantasized marriage would be — not at all how I had romanticized matrimony and the meeting of my future husband would come about. Instead, I didn’t look forward to being Homer Babbit’s wife/ plural wife.
“Why did God want me to do something that seemed so unnatural,” is what I would have asked myself if, at the brainwashed and controlled age of “sweet sixteen,” if I’d known enough to ask crucial questions. But there were few respected boundaries, let alone rights, in my cultish upbringing. I was simply to do what I was told and not ask questions. Children were to be seen, not heard. I had been threatened by my father with a beating, at age fifteen, for simply daring to respectfully ask, “Why?”
Notwithstanding, missing was the passion and desire I’d expected there would be as my wedding day approached. I was sad and out of sorts about how it was all coming down. I had been in love before, a number of times, and this wasn’t it! And though I surely wanted to do what God wanted me to do, I sure wished something would happen, too, so this marriage wouldn’t happen … wouldn’t go through!
ErVIL was going to have Homer and me marry sans dating and sans me even knowing the guy, let alone being attracted to him! It blows me over, now, to think my unscrupulous uncle would care so little about me and my needs and feelings that he would use priestcraft to manipulate totally naïve, trusting, and special me for his own power and financial gain — would pretend that he stood as God to us people, got revelation for us, and could, therefore, tell me who I was supposed to marry — and without even bringing my parents in on it!
He was using me and the members of his cult as though we were nothing but animals and human pawns in his hands put on earth to fulfill his plans — as though nobody mattered but him. This is evil. And it has left its repercussions reverberating in my life ever since. (More on that later.)
Evil Ervil had everyone duped. But I fail to see why all those who raised him and/or grew up with him and knew him well — his mother, my mother, her brothers, and their friends such as Homer — didn’t see and prevent what Ervil was doing to those in his fold. In other words, by saying or doing nothing, and looking the other way, these adults basically condoned it.
Uncle Ervil knew the most important thing in my sixteen-year-old Mormon fundamentalist female mind at the time was: Who am I supposed to marry and when? And how can I best help build up the kingdom of God? He knew this because this was what I was born and bred on. The woman’s whole purpose in life, in Mormon fundamentalism, was to marry the right man — as revealed to her by revelation — and to serve God or “The Work;” i.e., “The work of God/ Building up God’s kingdom on earth.”
There were already many men in the LeBaron cult, mostly married men, who had gone to my father and asked for permission to marry me. It had been going on the whole two years since my family moved to homestead in the LeBaron cult in 1960 when I was only fourteen. Daddy had turned most of those male suitors down, using the excuse that I was too young — which, of course, made them dislike my father more than maybe they already did. Or, at least, being refused permission to court or marry me hurt those men’s feelings.
To my LeBaron uncles and Mormon fundamentalist members, thirteen was not too young to be married off as a polygamist’s “wife.” I even know of one seven-year-old in Short Creek, the polygamist town on the border of Utah and Arizona, whose father told her to go tell the “profit” Uncle Roy she wanted to marry him! He told her to go home and wait till she was nine, then return. Roy married this little girl when she was only nine years old — just another woman in his harem!
I know of another case in Short Creek where the father, Lawrence Stud (pseudonym) traded his nine-year-old daughter to a polygamist for some land! So in Uncle Ervil’s mind, sixteen was the perfect age for a woman to marry; i.e., Get her before she could think for herself! Nor did he care how I felt about it. Again, I was just somebody for this sociopathic-psychopathic master manipulator to use for his own vain purposes, glorification, and financial gain.
In this video, Producer Rebecca Kimbel, one of my aunts-in-law, is interviewing one of my many first cousins, Donna LeBaron Goldberg, who grew up in Colonia LeBaron where I spent over eight years of my life as a child and young adult.
I Now know my mother’s brother, Ervil LeBaron, was a psychopath/ sociopath and, therefore, lacked a conscience. But I wonder if Homer didn’t have a twinge of conscience in secretly pulling this marriage off without my parents knowing about it — especially since he had known my mother since childhood.
Yes, didn’t Homer feel at least a little guilt in taking off, behind my parents’ back, with Mother’s favorite and best-looking, sexiest daughter? — especially since he had been a companion of Mother and her brothers there in the Mexico-Mormon colonies where they had grown up together!
In my diary, during this high-pressured and off-balance time Uncle Ervil was putting me through by way of his false revelations, I wrote: “I’m not looking forward to marrying Homer … I don’t even know this strange man. He barely arrived in the colony three days ago! I feel very nervous, confused, and “discumbooberated”[discombobulated] over suddenly, out of the blue, being married to him.
“But I am happy and feel so special because God revealed to Uncle Ervil what I’m supposed to do. I had been so longing to know what my mission in life was — who I was supposed to marry, and how I could best serve God — and so longing to get away from home and be on my own!
“Bill Tucker’s the man I’m in love with. But I am going to marry Homer Babbitt because I definitely want to serve God. And Uncle Ervil told me this was how I could best serve “Him” and the building up of “His” Kingdom.”
I see now that I was really only serving Uncle Ervil and “his” kingdom. But I had been taught, back then, that Ervil LeBaron was “like God to the people,” and second in command to Uncle Joel, our main Prophet. So what was a girl to do?!
At this stressful time, I also said in my diary, “Uncle Ervil told me he had a revelation I was supposed to marry Homer. I just wish I could feel in love with the man I’m supposed to marry. And how come I didn’t get this revelation from God too? Why did it only come through my uncle?”
But, at that time, I trusted implicitly my towering 6′ 4″, magnanimous, articulate, and charismatic uncle! It didn’t enter my mind he could do any wrong. I was taught he could only do right: He was “a perfect prophet of God.” But now I know he did wrong and was only a perfect “profit” of evil.
Of course, Ervil did not let me know he was simply horse-trading me, one of his nieces, to his friend Homer for some of Homer’s land. I found that out years later as I discovered more and more the freeloading, free-wheeling “n” dealing con Ervil was.
From reading peoples’ memoirs and other such, I discovered I was far from the only one “Evil Ervil” got “special revelation” for. And far from the only one whose marriage and life he’d manipulated and ultimately ruined with his dastardly devilish deceptions.
He screwed up everyone’s lives and marriages he came in contact with. But everybody I knew trusted him implicitly. Nobody dreamed he was deceiving them — only pretending he got revelations from God as to what they were supposed to do when, in reality, he was but taking advantage of their trust in him. Was only using them.*
*The memoirs of other Ex-LeBaron cult members relate how Ervil manipulated their lives and marriages. See my Menubar for “Media on My Extended Family, Friends, and Fundamentalist Mormon Cults.” There I have listed some memoirs and books about Ervil, such as “Prophet of Blood,” by Ben Bradley and Dale Van Atta.
This following interview with my Aunts Rebecca Kimbel, Susan Ray Shmidt, and others is one of the many great interviews Doris Hanson has posted on YouTube that explain well what my upbringing in the Mormon fundamentalist cults entailed.
Nobody knew Ervil was doing and saying the same things to everybody. For example, he would tell them he “got a revelation” they were supposed to marry so-and-so. Or HE got a revelation he, Ervil, was supposed to marry them … or so-and-so’s wife! And so on and so forth. You get the idea.
Yes, Ervil was even getting revelations that he was supposed to marry women who were already married! That is, Ervil said God told him to take women away from their husband and make them one of his own wives!
Meanwhile, I had written in my journal: “Bill Tucker’s the man I’m in love with. But I am going to marry Homer Babbit because I definitely want to serve God. And Uncle Ervil told me this was how I could best serve ‘Him’ and the building up of ‘His’ Kingdom.”
After my parents read in my diary the above words (and about Ervil and Homer’s collusion to secretly marry me without my parents knowing about it) they secretly contacted William Preston Tucker/ AKA Bill, and made arrangements (behind Ervil’s, Homer’s, and my back!) for Bill to marry me instead — post haste! More on this in an upcoming blog.
Meanwhile, Uncle Ervil, “Second Grand Head” of the church; i.e., cult, had no idea (nor did I) that my parents had quickly hustled me off onto Bill Tucker ONLY after having snuck into my diary and read that Ervil was about to have me secretly married to Homer! (Wow! All this secrecy, sneaking around, deception, and controlling of people behind their back!!)
I’ve gotten off onto a bunny trail and ahead of the story, too, when I say it’s wonderful to be married to the man you’re deeply in love with. But it would have been more wonderful if that man had returned the respect and feelings — especially would it have been wonderful if you’re a naïve sixteen-year-old who has no idea what love, marriage, and polygamy are all about, but has lots of idealized fantasies about what she thinks it’s all about — such as how “wonderful” it will be. (LOL!!!)
For example, besides all the crap Mom and Pop instilled in me* about “how wonderful” polygamy is, I still believed what I’d learned in fairytales: That sex and everything else ended once you were married. Because, once you were married, you simply sailed off into the beautiful blue yonder and “lived happily ever after!” Well, isn’t that how every fairytale ends: Boy-gets-girl, “Then they live happily ever after”?
Girl, was I in for a shock! Example: I found, after I was married, that not only did I still want my husband’s kisses, but I very much wanted him sexually too. And the desire only grew stronger and stronger and sex only grew better and better with each lovemaking session. (Believe me, it wouldn’t have been like this had I been married to Homer Babbitt!)
Then I came to realize the other two wives felt the same way as I did about “our”/ their husband, Bill Tucker. Not only that, but I also came to realize they, too, were still having sex with him — and even more so once their husband took me “on”!
*The following interview features my Aunt-in-law Rebecca Kimbel and my bright cyberspace friend Kathleen Covington. I’ve posted it as it gives great insight into the Mormon fundamentalist cult and the propaganda I was raised on.
I left off in “My Memoir: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And More Perils of Polygamy — Part 19-G” relating that I had come to realize people did not simply sail off into the sunny sunset and “live happily ever after” once they were married — the way fairytales I heard and read had always ended. Children’s fairy tales, my Mormon fundamentalist parents, and the cult had filled me full of SUCH poppycock! They didn’t prepare me for reality!
One of my first wake-up calls and reality checks came when I found my/”our” husband Bill Tucker was having sex with his other two wives, AFTER marriage — because they felt the same way about their husband as I: They wanted him just as much as I did — because we were all very much in love with him.
(To add to our sexual pleasure, Bill, though only about 5’7″ tall, was endowed with nearly a ten-inch pecker — when extended to its fullest! (Not hiding when the “pricks” were passed out, he had proudly allowed me to measure his gorgeous member.)
But it took innocent childbride me around four more months before I realized I was not the only one still having sex with him once pregnant — and still really wanting him sexually. It was such a shock to find sex didn’t end once we were “married happily ever after,” nor did it even end after we got pregnant! Shocking! Because I was raised on the “law of chastity” and Victorian values: Sex was not to be enjoyed. It was only for procreation!
But why was it so shocking to find Bill was still having sex with his other pregnant wives when it seemed okay for him to still be having sex with me when I was pregnant? It was just one more revelation, after I was married into polygamy as an adolescent, to realize Bill’s other wives had the same sexual feelings and desires I had.
I was pregnant within two months of marriage to Bill. What’s more, and common in polygamy, is all three of Bill’s wives were expecting a new baby around the same time. Sex during pregnancy definitely went against the teachings of our church/cult — and against our prophets Joel and Ervil’s teachings. However, I was in for even a bigger shocks when, eventually, I learned Bill’s other two wives wanted him sexually even more so once their husband “took me on”!
I can’t tell you how this realization affected me, my true-believing faith, and my understanding of “the law of chastity” and “the gospel” that I was raised on and taught extensively, especially by my mother Esther LeBaron. “The law of chastity” was one of the many fanatic fundamentalist gospel teachings she had ingrained in her by her own stoic Mormon Victorian parents.*
Ma bragged to me, among other things, that she and Pa had lived the “law of chastity” during the whole of their twenty-two-year marriage! (The jury is still out on that one!) Since I was her favorite child before I escaped the church/cult at age twenty-one, she proudly told me, when I was around age sixteen, “Beulah, one of the reasons you turned out so special, beautiful, and bright is I conceived you under the protection of the holy temple garments and the law of chastity.”(!!)
This revered Mormon fundamentalist law included that having sex was only to get pregnant. Sex was to be discontinued as soon as you were pregnant. And only participated in while you were fully clothed in your temple garments that covered you from neck to ankle and shoulder to wrist. And NO sex was to be had while you were nursing, either.
You wonder how my horny dad ever held out — especially since masturbation and bestiality, in the teachings of the law of chastity, were also dire sins — as rightly bestiality should be a mortal sin: It’s raping animals!! (Or did Dad hold out? I may tell you in my upcoming book.)
But that’s only part of the “law of chastity” the early Mormon prophets taught. To further complicate married life, not only was sex purely for procreation but considered lustful if you enjoyed it even then. And this is only the half of it!
Needless to say, fuck the law of chastity! My being added to the harem greatly affected the other two wives, Bill, and his and their love life. It made them hunger for more sex more often. There’ll be more on this in my upcoming Memoir/ book. I’ll just tell you now they did not believe in, let alone keep the Mormon fundamentalist principles of “The Law of Chastity”– and that’s not the half of it! For example, they even had sex in the nude! (LOL!) And Bill told me one of his wives was more horny and hot WHEN she was pregnant — so that was his favorite time with her!
*The following video productions are excellent overviews and introductions into some of what my life was like growing up and living in Mormon fundamentalist cults.
“Fuck The Law of Chastity”! My being added to the harem greatly affected the other two wives and Bill Tucker, too — especially did it affect his and their love life. They did not believe in, let alone live the Mormon fundamentalist doctrine of “The Law of Chastity” — and that’s not the half of it!!
But nothing whets the sexual appetite more than your husband getting a new, sexy, nubile, plural wife six to fifteen years younger than you! Bill’s first wife was thirty-one, the second twenty-two years old when I, sexy-sixteen, was married to their/my husband.
Suffice it, for now, to say the rivalry was rampant, and I would not have suffered half as much in my arranged marriage had I been married to Homer Babbitt whom I did not love and wasn’t attracted to … so I would not have been longing for him, sexually nor otherwise.
I say “arranged marriage” because, Bill, ever a people-pleaser who could not say “no” when under pressure, only married me due to the manipulation and social pressure his buddy Ervil LeBaron put on him to get him to marry me.
Bill, always out to collect more prestige and popularity, knew it would be a notch on his belt — as well as on the Mormon-LeBaron blueblood totem pole — were he to marry me. You see, I was “royalty”! I was a niece of “The Second Grand Head,” Ervil LeBaron, and of Joel LeBaron, the Prophet of our “Church.”
On top of that, I was/ am a great-great-granddaughter of the “renowned” Benjamin F. Johnson whom the self-proclaimed Prophet Joseph Smith had sealed to him as a son — and through whom the self-proclaimed “profit” Joel LeBaron claimed his priesthood keys and the “Scepter of Power” — the priesthood power which made Joel “The One Mighty and Strong;” i.e., the Prophet the “Profit” Joseph Smith prophesied was to come in the last days to set the house of God in order. (My uncle Joel set it in order alright, LOL!)
So, against the wishes of his first two plural wives, and though they fought him tooth-‘n’-toenail, Bill added me to his harem — even though it lacked integrity (I learned years later) because, secretly, Bill no longer believed in polygamy and was making plans to leave the LeBaron cult and colony!
Bill, as a Mormon, had always felt a little inferior, when it came to the prestigious Mormon totem-pole and its pecking-order because he was not part of the blueblood of the Mormon church nor of the Mormon fundamentalist LeBaron “Church” … though he was totally “top notch” in about every other way, they say!
But by marrying me, Bill not only became related to the prophets of our church/cult but also related to the Prophet Joseph Smith, the god of Mormonism! That is, he finally became a part of the Mormon royal blood — just in time to leave Mormonism altogether … four years later!)
*The following video production, produced by my Aunt-in-law Rebecca Kunz Kimbel featuring her half-sister, my Aunt Irene Kunz LeBaron-Spencer, is an excellent overview and introduction to what my life was like growing up in and living in the LeBaron colony in Mexico and in Mormon fundamentalist cults, in general.
The following Video gives more excellent background on how I was raised as a Mormon fundamentalist Plyg. The photo shows eight of my handsome Uncle Verlan’s ten wives. And features my aunt Irene Kunz LeBaron/ Spencer being interviewed by her half-sister and my half-aunt-in-law, Producer Rebecca Kunz Kimbel.
In a very short time after being married into Bill Tucker’s family or “love nest,” I found I had simply been catapulted out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-flames. I’d thought I was escaping my hellish home life with my family of origin for a heavenly love life with the man I was deeply in love with, idolized, and adored. It turned out to be just the opposite.
In fact, over time I came to realize I was nothing but a Mormon fundamentalist sex slave — a concubine in a harem where I wasn’t wanted, in a cult with no Dr. Phil to fill me in on the whys and wherefores of monogamy, let alone polygamy — though I needed advice, understanding, and help in the biggest way and to the endth degree.
My parents had told me they’d had a revelation Bill was the man I was supposed to be married to for all eternity. And that I would be Bill’s best, most righteous, and favorite wife, and the Savior of his family! That was only the beginning of the bunk they filled me full of before I married Bill.
My Uncle Ervil, a “prophet,” had also really pushed this marriage — Plus, I’d been so indoctrinated with a bunch of other garbage about plural marriage, that, as a teenage bride, I was up to my forehead in shit, but so full of crap, I couldn’t see past it!
To add to this mess, I found a whole different scenario and “crap” once I became Bill’s third “wife.” For the purposes of this short blog, I will simply say: What went on in my new family was done in secrecy. I did not realize, till years later, many significant things — including why my new family forbade me to visit my mother and father, let alone talk about the troubles and travails, problems, loneliness, and grief my marriage brought me, their bereft teenage daughter.
I was not allowed to talk to anyone else such as sisters or friends, either. And forget counselors. Uncle Ervil was my only source for counseling. And some counselor he was!
All he, my narcissistic and calculating, power-pushing uncle told me, when I went to him in torment and travail at age nineteen, was: “Any problems a woman has in her marriage are her fault. If you buckle down, submit to, and serve your husband unquestioningly and fervently — doing everything he tells you to do — this will cure all your marriage problems!!! (As if I wasn’t already a slave to my husband, serving him with all my heart in hopes of winning his heart!)
Now I realize there was good reason for why the second wife told me (paraphrasing): “Bill hates when we go home to visit our parents. He will put any wife aside if he should find she told her parents or ANYONE about ANYTHING going on in our marriage OR Bill’s household!! And remember: Bill is NOT one to forgive transgressions! Once he puts you aside, he will never forgive you nor take you back. He’ll be THROUGH with you!!!”
I sure didn’t know it then but know now reasons why my new family was adamant I didn’t visit my family-of-origin — especially my parents: They were hiding bisexuality, among other things — even from me! (In the LeBaron cult in the 1960s, homosexuality was a sin punishable by the death penalty — and that’s but the beginning of it.)
The following is one of the many excellent informative interviews you can find on YouTube that reveals many truths about the Mormon fundamentalist cult lifestyle I was raised in.
Here Aunt Rebecca Kunz Kimbel is interviewing her sister, my Aunt Irene Kunz LeBaron/Spencer, formerly a wife of my Uncle Verlan LeBaron, one of my mother’s eight brothers:
I said in an earlier blog that my being married into Bill’s “family” (or “love nest”?) was out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire: I thought I was escaping my hellish home life with my family of origin for a heavenly love life with the man I was deeply in love with, idolized, and adored. It turned out to be the opposite.
I sure didn’t know it during the years I was married to Bill, but I realized years later (as I became older, wiser, and more informed) the reason Bill and his other two wives were so touchy about my having any contact with my parents or family was that around a year before I was married to Bill, my older sister had gone home to visit our parents to tell them that she was just sick because, among other things, she had discovered her husband, “Saint Dick”, was fuckin’ ‘n’ suckin’ “Saint Peter.'” And stickin’ light bulbs and beer bottles up his butt … ‘n’ other such!
She was practically going nuts because she had witnessed it all for herself while looking through a keyhole after hearing noises in the living room way past her bedtime!
More about this in my upcoming book. Suffice it to say, “Peter” had already returned to the United States with his wife by the time my uncle Ervil, et Al, heard from my parents the details my sister had witnessed.
When “Dicky’s” buddy Billy got wind of it by way of his bosom-buddy Ervil LeBaron, Billy betrayed bosom-buddy Ervil, ran to his old Mormon-Missionary pal Dicky and cried:
In the Mormon French mission field in the mid to late 1950s, Peter, Dick (pseudonyms), and Bill were close friends. They had all been high-up priesthood leaders in the Mormon French Mission Field for about two years before Bill was ousted and excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he had begun preaching Mormon fundamentalism to his followers, other French missionaries, and converts.
I think these above details give you a good idea why my new family — Bill’s family — was so careful to keep from me their private love life. And why they thoroughly warned and threatened me that if I were to go home to my parents to tell ANYTHING that was going on in my marriage or Bill’s family, I’d be dumped!
Now, what’s an adolescent girl to do when she’s stumped, but not even allowed to visit her parents and siblings once she’s married into a quagmire — cast from the frying pan into the fire?
The following is one of the many excellent informative interviews you can find on YouTube that reveals truths about the Mormon fundamentalist lifestyle I was raised in.
Here Aunt Rebecca Kimbel is interviewing her sister, my Aunt Irene Kunz LeBaron/Spencer, formerly a wife of my Uncle Verlan LeBaron, one of my mother’s seven brothers.
My lonely “Little House on the Hill” where I lived most of the 4.5 years I was married to Bill, in Colonia LeBaron, Chihuahua Mexico
Bill’s second wife, Lolita, played mouthpiece for “the family” when, not long after I was married to Bill, she warned me to never go home to visit my parents, exclaiming, “Bill doesn’t like his wives going home talking to their parents and family. If he ever finds you’ve told ANYTHING about what’s going on in your marriage or his family, he’ll DUMP you! And that’s that!! That’s the end of your marriage to him!! He’ll put you aside and never take you back!!”
Newly married to Bill, the love of my life, of course, I wanted to be a good wife. So, what’s a shy, naïve, teenage Plyg to do when she’s not allowed to talk to the people who care most about her, her parents and Sibs — those who could give her the best advice and support, once she’s married, but being knifed?!
And since when does a normal husband deny his new adolescent bride/concubine the right to go home now and then to visit her parents and family?? Marriage should not mean the husband owns the wife hook, line, and sinker!
I look at this whole scenario now and think, “WHAT a stinker was Bill!! It’s unbelievable what secluded cults and cult leaders get away with!”
Once I was married into this polygamous mess, I really needed my parent’s advice and help and my sisters’ friendship — the absence of which crippled more than ever the highly disadvantaged child bride I was. And tripled the loneliness I felt. I was married and a wife, but my spouse I was so in love with was usually absent from my life.
Bill’s other two wives were no source of help nor friendship. Instead, they were my rivals — enemies. Dangerously jealous, their resentment and envy of me was only outdone by their working together to undermine me in the eyes of my husband, their friends, and the colony.
One of the main ways they did this, to begin with, was by constantly running down my family of origin. Even in front of me, I would tell Bill their latest bad stories about my/ “the Spencer family.” Making my parents and siblings look like the worst people on the planet couldn’t help but cause Bill to think less of me by association. Meanwhile, they built their own families up to high heaven!*
Therefore, I was most uncomfortable around them. That’s an understatement! I ended up alone and lost in my little yellow house on the hill where I spent most of my days waiting for Bill, coping, crying, raising my child on my own … and always longing for my husband and home! (What husband?!)
*Note: After Bill died, there was no need anymore to ruin my reputation in his eyes by, among other things, maligning my family. So Bill’s first two wives Maryilyn and Lolita (pseudonym) unbelievably became buddies with my family–the family whose character they had assassinated for the previous 4.5 years!!
Their ploy now: Make me look bad in the eyes of my family who already resented me because I’d left the cult. By becoming friends with my mother and rival sister Judith, especially, Maryilyn and Lolita built themselves up by running me down. That way, people wouldn’t think them SO bad for having ostracized me while Bill was alive.
Yes, they pretended to be in with my family — the family they had so defaced the whole four-and-a-half years I was married to Bill (so Bill would lose his love and respect for me!) Even told my mother and siblings it was MY fault they had thought so badly of my family! Their antics were easy to get away with: I was on the outs with my family and everyone else in the cult for having left their religion and escaped their clutches!*
NOTE:* Paraphrasing Steven Hassan, leading authority on destructive mind-control groups: People are born with authentic selves. Unhealthy parenting, groups, or cults exert undue influence, making you but a clone — an extension of your parents or the group.
Destructive groups don’t allow you free will. They won’t let you leave with your dignity intact. They want to control you. You have to believe what they believe no matter what!
*NOTE: The rest of this series is continued in the blog “Part 19: N-Z” to be published in a week or so. I grouped the series “Pt 19: A-Z” into these two different blogs to make it easier for people who might not be able to easily download the full series, “Part 19: A- Z.”
Another variable in the equivocation, as to Mom’s virginity on her wedding night, is the following (Perhaps I’m throwing a hand grenade into the equation): When I was about fourteen, Momma told me how girls she knew, when she was growing up, used things like bananas, carrots, and broomstick handles to put up “the place where babies are born.” Also used these and other devices to try to achieve an abortion.
I barely knew what she was talking about. And didn’t know masturbation or the need for such existed. Don’t know why Mum told me this stuff. I assume she was expounding on thoughts she had at the moment. Or was she suggesting I use the same tools, should the need arise — only don’t tell anyone the idea came from her?
That’s questionable, given part of virginity means an unbroken hyman. I think she was simply telling me some of the “worldly” things she knew “bad girls” used to do — but things she thought I wouldn’t do because I was her girl so “wasn’t worldly.” She believed I was better than they: I was “born a Saint.”
Such are the things my pure, perfect … perfectly-fanatic Mormon mum told me on the sly in moments of weakness and reverie. I suppose they were things too interesting to keep to herself. And I was Mum’s confidant.
Here’s another piece of juicy information Mumma shared with me after I asked her to explain what a “dirty joke” was. A couple of my sixth-grade classmates used the term but laughed at me when I asked what it meant. They said, “Go ask yer mom!” So I did.
At first, Mom told me “Johnny fell in a mud puddle” was an example of a dirty joke. But I was dissatisfied with that answer, so she caved in — but only after securing from me a promise I’d never repeat what she told me! Then she quickly recited the following bawdy rhyme she’d learned as a youngster. I admit I’m breaking my promise for I’m repeating what she said:
Mum had to explain what this “dirty joke” meant, but I had no trouble converting the rhyme to memory.
You get the idea, though: The jury is still out on whether Mumma was indeed a virgin on her wedding night — and it will always be out. So your guess is as good as mine. And my guess is she wasn’t — despite the fact she and Papa had raised me to believe suicide was preferable to losing my virginity. Had I lost my virginity before my wedding night, I would have committed suicide. It was that serious!
But I was raised on triple standards! I didn’t know it then. I know it now. Little ears have big listening capacities. During my growing years, I learned many things my parents had no idea I was picking up on. I recall illicit things I experienced and heard before I could barely babble. But I had the adults fooled. So take my advice: Never assume a baby who can’t talk, can’t understand what YOU are talking about or doing!
Well, I’ve said my piece for now, so peace to you till next week’s blog and “journal jog.” My head’s beginning to nod. ‘Tis time to get some sleep ‘n’ roll some rrrr’s before the sun peeps under my window sill.
The following video gives insight into how I was raised and what my blog today depicted concerning virginity and Mormon Fundamentalism.
Let’s change the topic a bit and go back to when I was twelve and we inquisitive LeBaron-Spencer siblings — 11 of us by then — were once more huddled around our loving, peaceful parents in the living room. Those who could manage to get there first were sitting on the colorful rag-rug Mama had made and spread out in front of our warm fireplace hearth Daddy designed and built.
The periphery of the fireplace was artfully decorated with shades of variegated vermilion petrified-wood — rock-work laid by my artisan father’s own skilled hands. I loved to study its eye-catching splendor while listening to our parents’ religious lessons.
It was Family Home Evening again — our Monday-night Mormon family get-together my parents held sporadically. As was customary in our family during these times, we older children were taking advantage of the time together with our seemingly Godlike mom and pop to pump them for information about their past. After we’d heard about how they met and married, I couldn’t help but interject the all-important question: “Mama, were you a virgin when you married Daddy?”
I don’t know what prompted me to ask that question. I should’ve “known” Mama was a virgin, given how she strictly instilled within us children that it was a matter of life or death that we be virgins on our wedding night. That was good old Mormon fundamentalist doctrine!
A man could have lots of wives … But the man had to be a virgin too, on his first wedding night, anyway! (After that, he could marry any number of women though he was no longer a virgin. Still, each of his wives had to be a virgin! But there were exceptions to this rule, too, such as in the case of divorce.)
But it was an all-important question to me, given Momma and Papa had so fervently impressed upon me and my siblings that we be chaste virgins when we married. We were not even to kiss a man till we were at the marriage alter! I repeat: We were not to kiss our loved one till we were at the marriage alter!!
Therefore, I was taken aback when Mama flushed then exchanged with Papa an embarrassed equivocal half-grin implying, “Don’t ask; don’t you tell.” Then, having established an unspoken agreement and understanding with Papa, Mama carefully chose her words as she formed her response: “Why … of course, I was a virgin on my wedding night!”
But I sensed the look exchanged between her and Papa suggested a special and personal secret held between the two. It left me with the impression the jury was still out on the Ma-plus-Pa virginity equation.
Given their equivocation, I only wonder: Was Pa on the bottom or the top? And was their “wedding night” in the back of the pickup bouncing toward Ma’s parents’ home? That’s all I want to know! It’s more than I could know at the tender age of twelve … You have to know a little to ask a lot. At that age, I barely knew how babies were begot … wished I knew not if it was what I thought.
But I certainly wanted to believe my parents abided by the chaste rules they taught from the time I was a tot: People must NOT lose their virginity! And, I repeat, Shouldn’t even kiss until they were at the marriage alter!
Older and wiser now, I suspect some of that bouncing of the pickup bed that carried Mommy and Poppy from Mesa, Arizona to Chihuahua, Mexico was created by more than the bumps in the rutted, rugged 1944 roads those many hours the truck sped along at top speed towards Mama’s parents’ home. (Perhaps Uncle Ben was doing his utmost to get these two lovers — my future parents — to his father’s presence while his sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law were still “chaste”?)
Oh, well. What the hell! Nature has purposely made the attraction between two people in love too difficult for abstinence — especially when they’re alone and getting to “know each other better” in the back of a secluded pickup. At least, that’s what I surmise. What’s your opinion?
I also suspect (from what I learned when Mother let me read her diary she wrote when she was in her late teens) other activities also had something to do with whether Mother’s hymen was still unbroken. I’ll tell you what I mean in an upcoming blog. Meanwhile, who knows what else may have passed between Ma, Pa, and those five years following the incident she wrote about in her diary!
October 1962: Beulah Stephany Spencer-LeBaron de Tucker, age 16, with husband William Preston Tucker, age 26
Today, let’s expand on a disturbing theme I mentioned earlier: My sister Mary told me Mother made advances toward her ex-husband polygamist Sigfried Widmar. (He already had a number of plural wives at the time.) Ugh!
Not sure if Mumma married Siegfried. But it’s disgusting to court, let alone marry your own daughter’s ex-husband — especially given that he very badly mistreated her daughter, my sister Mary, while she was married to Sig. Not only that, Sig had greatly neglected and maltreated his three sons Mary bore him (Mom’s grandchildren), including never visiting them nor sending child-support after the divorce!
Mother was taking care of herself and lacked a sense of boundaries. But messy Mormon fundamentalism and religious polygamy leave ample space for disgrace — ample justification for fornication. Incest is common. Mothers and daughters married to the same man, in some polygamist cults, is but one example.
While Daddy was still living, Mother had designs on MY husband William Preston Tucker! She was in love with him, idolized him, and fantasized that she would be married to him in the celestial kingdom (if not sooner!) — one avenue Mormon polygamy allows! (Orthodox Mormons believe righteous Mormon men will have any number of wives in heaven — so it doesn’t matter that here on earth they are your own mother, mother-in-law, daughter, et Al!
Ma would turn on like a Christmas tree fawning over MY husband polygamist Billy Tucker whenever he came around! She literally preened about like a peacock in heat waving her fan along with her tailfeathers to wow my “cock” — showing him she was his fan … wanted him to be her fan.
As a part of her courting fanfare, peacock-hen Ma performed for my lover Bill her fanciest piano pieces — difficult classics like Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto in C Sharp Minor,” and Debussy’s tone poem “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” and “Clair de Lune.” Oh, Mum knew how to impress — knew how my beloved Billy took to classical music!
Bill fancied himself classy when he listened to and appreciated such music. Thank God Mum’s mom, my Pianist/piano-teaching Grandma Maud LeBaron saw to it Mummy got ample years of private piano lessons and plenty of time to practice and perfect her pretty fancy piano pieces; otherwise, Mumma wouldn’t have had much to impress others with — fat ‘n’ 40 with her fourteen beautiful kidlings straggling along behind her fantastic fan feathers!
Though Bill had a Bachelor of Science degree with honors and an Honorary Masters degree from UCLA and had also taught for a while at Texas Western University, he was always conscious of the fact he grew up poor (He was born during the Depression era). He was ashamed of his father, who, though an artist and talented musician, was never well-to-do and made his living as a machinist and Foreman in a factory.
But that’s only the half of it when it comes to Mumma flying in, in her fantasy world (for let it be known that Mumma lived in quite a dreamworld) and coming on to my hubby like a peacock spreading its fantastic fan feathers! She was strutting her stuff while fantasizing about being Bill’s favorite wife in the hereafter — if not in the here-and-now — while I was still married to and greatly neglected by my Billy … and she was still married to my daddy!!
She was having her problems with her hot-tempered, tyrannical spouse — my mean, aged papa twenty-six years her senior. But I was having my troubles with Bill too! He was no saint! Just an Alpha Male many women and men were in love. They, like me, idolized and adored gifted “Charming Billy.”
(Remember the song: “Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?) People in the cult couldn’t get enough of Billy Tucker. Many wanted to mate with him to get even closer — wanted to be a part of this amazing creaton … wanted to connect sexually. (Not sure how many ever did but they wanted to.)
Fuck! As luck would have it, much to my grief, Bill, my spouse the louse, left me after four-and-a-half trying years. That is, he “put me aside” — separated from me because, after too much suffering and disappointment, I had dissociated — had withdrawn bodily feelings for him. I had told him I no longer felt anything — was numb during conjugal relationships — no longer even felt when he fondled my once highly sensitive breasts! I’d managed to shut off physical feelings for him so as to distance myself from the eternal emotional pain caused by him and polygamy.
His “putting me aside” — that is, separating from me — though it devastated me, didn’t bother Mama at all! She saw it as a windfall for her! So it goes without saying, she didn’t sympathize with me and my sorrow, let alone did she try to help her twenty-year-old me patch things up with my precious hubby. Instead, Ma gleefully licked her chops for her chance to top me and take up with Billy in my place; i.e., displace me! (How would you like to have your mom as your competition — as if Bill’s other wives, boyfriends, and suitors weren’t competition enough!)
But a few months later, as Lady Fuck fanned her cards, Mother’s aces in the hole fell like dumped dominoes: After Bill separated from me, he secretly skipped out of Colonia LeBaron and Mom’s life! Then, safely hidden from Mom’s brother my uncle Ervil LeBaron — and his Danites — Bill announced he had left the LeBaron cult and Mormon fundamentalism for good and forever.
Then, three months after that, Bill died! “God took Bill!” said the true-believing cult members. “It’s payback for his leaving the one and only true church!”
Actually, Bill died of a ruptured appendix — payback for years in a cult where he couldn’t afford physicals even if he would visit a doctor. Sadly, Bill was allergic to the wonder drug Penicillin, the modern miracle medicine that has wiped out most deaths these days due to a burst appendix. (Penicillin cures the once-fatal infection, peritonitis, that quickly sets in following a ruptured appendix.)
You should have seen Mother at Bill’s funeral! It was held in Southern California. But she made sure to catch a ride leaving Mexico to go to the United States though she couldn’t afford it. Esther LeBaron-McDonald de Spencer simply had to attend her son-in-law (fantasy lover) Bill’s burial!
At the graveside, Ma was so caught up in her “poor me” misfortune of losing her fantasy lover Bill that her daughter, myself, was insignificant in her eyes. She wanted everybody to feel sorry for HER because SHE lost her “son-in-law.” So caught up in her attention-getting drama and trying to get in touch with her own feelings was Mama that she never once acknowledged me and mine. Never walked over to say hello to me, her grieving girl, let alone did she show me any other sympathy or empathy — never inquired as to how I might feel about my adored husband’s suddenly and unexpectedly dying! Of course, I had left her church by then so perhaps she was simply shunning me. (?) But so had her “Billy” apostatized from her church! Go figure.
At the Memorial Service, immature Mama hadn’t comforted me, either. She was probably unnerved that I was there! And it seemed I was supposed to be fawning over her! Go figure again. I already have … long since: The poor lady had a narcissistic personality disorder. 20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists Use to Silence You I was only an appendage swinging off her like a pendulum: If she was okay, I was okay. She didn’t totally see me as a viable and dynamic entity separate from herself. (We’ll discuss this topic more in a future chapter.)
“The LeBaron Story” is truly a “Vanity Book” — not only because my uncle Verlan LeBaron paid a publishing company in 1981 (back when self-publishing was not the norm) to publish the book — but also because it’s a revisionistic, apologetic, and biased history of “the Mexico LeBarons;” i.e., my grandparents Maud and Dayer LeBaron and their offspring.
What’s more, though my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Verlan finished and got the book published, they are largely NOT the main authors of it. Truth is, Uncle Verlan was FAR too busy to write a book — even if he knew how — too busy working, traveling around from country to country visiting his ten wives and fifty-plus kids — and running from his brother Ervil who was out to kill him! Aunt Charlotte was about that busy too!
Fact is, MY mother/Verlan’s older sister Esther LeBaron-McDonald de Spencer (who possessed a BA in Journalism) is the one who birthed and did the groundwork for what is now “The LeBaron Story.” She wrote a large part of this book, then turned her “baby” — her manuscript over to Verlan, along with her journals and notes, telling him he could finish and publish her book — could even have all the proceeds from it!
Did she tell them they could have ALL the credit for it too? I know Mother could be ridiculously magnanimous and philanthropic at times. But was she this magnanimous and philanthropic? Even if it were the case, too bad those who published her “baby” didn’t return ANY of her magnanimity and philanthropy. That is, they gave my mother NOT a bit of thanks nor credit for all the work she put into initiating then writing most of “The LeBaron Story” — her gift to Verlan LeBaron and “God’s work.” Nowhere do you even get a suggestion that anyone other than Verlan and Charlotte had anythong to do with writing this text! How sad!!
Turning her book idea and all her manuscript work over to the new head of “The Church of The First Born of the Fullness of Times was Mother’s loving and conscientious effort to help her brother Verlan look good and thereby better “build up the kingdom of God.” And it was her way of paying tithing to extend and defend “God’s work” because Verlan had taken over for her brother Joel F. LeBaron, “The One Mighty and Strong Prophet,” after Joel was murdered by his brother Ervil!
The work of finishing and compiling Mother’s grandiose book was largely done by my Uncle Verlan’s first wife Charlotte who did not know enough of the LeBaron family history to write it without relying heavily upon Info from my mother Esther LeBaron-McDonald de Spencer’s journals and notes!
Therefore, about two-thirds of “The LeBaron Story” came directly from my dear Mum’s half-completed manuscript, notes, and journal entries. I was around when she was writing part of her family history — the Mexico-LeBaron history. Delusional Mumma was so proud of her heritage she thought it MOST mportant the world know about her “saintly family” — the greatest and most holy family ever born into the world — next to Christ … perhaps — through whom “The One Mighty and Strong Prophet Joel LeBaron” was born. (Does this smell of megalomania?)
Mumma talked much about her writing endeavors — the “LeBaron History” she was birthing. Having read part of her manuscript and journals, I recognize her writing voice and input throughout “The LeBaron Story” that makes up a large part of this book.
Therefore, note the two different writer’s voices in “The LeBaron Story”! Anything with beautifully written structured writing, defined paragraphs, quotes, sources listed at the back of the book, etc., is my mother Esther LeBaron Spencer’s writing voice — part of her contribution. Whereas Aunt Charlotte, Uncle Verlan, et Al’s writing voices are in the chapters where everything is run together and there aren’t structured paragraphs, footnotes, etc.
But, even though Uncle Verlan and Aunt Charlotte used large parts of what Mother wrote, word for word — used her material exactly as she had written it — no editing whatsoever — as I said before, they gave my creative, ambitious, giving Mom not one BIT of credit — not one speck of acknowledgment … let alone so much as a howdy-do-dee or thank-you! It’s tantamount to plagiarism … and shameful how Charlotte and Verlan took ALL the credit for Mama’s talent, initiative, education, writing, and hard work!
But getting back to the body of the book, if you were to take the authors’ word for everything, the Mexico LeBarons are/were “a saintly people with a Godly mission.” Well, I beg to differ: Wishing doesn’t make it so. In other words, wishful thinking, such as self-proclaiming oneself as “The One Mighty and Strong,” and claiming one comes from “A Godly people with a Messianic mission” doesn’t make it true.
Much of the book’s lore takes place in Chihuahua, Mexico. Unfortunately, the authors tell the story in the words of true-believing, fundamentalist-Mormon-LeBaron cult members. In other words, it’s a highly biased history with a missionary purpose.
True to their fanatic religiosity, the book was mainly written to proselytize and promote Uncle Joel LeBaron’s cult: “The Church of the First Born of the Fullness of Times.” This presupposes a revision — rewritten history, then; i.e., a white-washing of the LeBarons. Thus, it’s myth in the making.
Nonetheless, I was able to glean a bit of useful information from it. So I’m glad the book was written despite the biased viewpoint because nobody else in the immediate Mexico LeBaron family has written a first-hand history about themselves — and it shows how biased they were, some of what their bias was, and how they used it to portray and supplant themselves as God’s only emissaries of “the truth,” His Work, and His Plan. It’s a bias that supports their grandiose sense-of-entitlement and efforts to achieve power, control, and position in the world. Suffice it to say, despite
Suffice it to say, despite “The LeBaron Story” needing a good Editor’s service, it was quite an endeavor and accomplishment on the part of my not well-educated nor well-read but extremely busy country uncle and his wives. All the while they were compiling Mother’s notes and manuscripts, then finishing this chronology, they were ever laboring under heavy pressures and disadvantages such as raising huge families of children while living in backward, primitive conditions–and running for their life. But book-buyer beware … be wary! That’s all I can say!
I was given a copy of this book many years ago when it first came out in 1981– fourteen years after I escaped the LeBaron cult in 1967. After reading the text, the obvious Messianic preaching and purpose, plus the revisionism, white-washing, and grandiose fabrications throughout the chronicle of “The LeBaron Story” got my gut so badly I was on my way to toss the book in the dumpster when two of Uncle Verlan’s daughters dropped in. They believed their father was a prophet, so were very happy to be gifted with “The LeBaron Story.” And I was very happy to get rid of it.
But thirty-six years later, for purposes of my own understanding and research, I had to re-buy the book! Argh! It’s going for around $45.00 in hardback on Amazon.com now. Wonders never cease to amaze me … so I wonder! Well, to each his own … and read on!
I left off in blog, “Pt 22: Ma, Pa, Me, and Polygamy on Parade,” saying: Mama preached polygamy and told people they would go to hell if they did not live it, but other than her first six months of marriage to Daddy, she never shared/ had to share her own husband/my father in the whole twenty-two years she was married to him.
But not long after Daddy died, she once again “helped save” a man by becoming his plural wife — as she had with Daddy. I mentioned this man in a previous blog: This new husband was an attractive LDS Mormon man around fifty years of age: Mel Orchard. He was as big a windbag as Ma! But a bigger kicker is his legal wife, a mainline Mormon, didn’t know the marriage took place! Mother was around forty-six or so, then.
She was not married to windbag Mel for long. In an effort to become his favorite wife, Ma manipulated a sixteen-year-old virgin into becoming old-man Mel’s third wife. To make a long story shorter, word has it she told this young girl and her family she’d had a revelation their daughter was to marry “her” husband Mel. But Ma’s ploy backfired on her.
After helping old-man-Mel secure his child bride, much to her ire, he neglected Mama. As you might imagine, her efforts and sacrifice to please her new husband did not bring in the appreciation and favoritism from him she believed and preached was supposed to happen when a woman got her husband another wife “to build up his kingdom.” (Mormon fundamentalism has all kinds of pie-in-the-sky, not-down-to-earth beliefs about plural marriage and how it’s supposed to work!)
My dreamer but let-down Ma was too jealous, hurt, and aggravated to remain married to her heart-throb Melvin after procuring for him a nubile maid only to find her manipulations ended up losing more of his love and time, rather than gaining her more of it. The old gentleman spent most of his time and energy trying to please his new teenage wife — trying to get it up and on with this adolescent “fawn”!
Not long after that, Ma took up with an old High School flame, a handsome Hispanic hunk — Catholic, charming, and very married — who lived in Chihuahua City, a-few-hours-drive from her residence in Colonia LeBaron. When she was in her teens, Mother’s parents would not allow her to marry him: He was of the wrong religion and race. But she and this stunningly gorgeous Mexican man had never fallen out of love.
Now, many years later and a lot of water under the bridge and despite his being married, his wife not knowing about it, and his not being Mormon, Mama carried on a back-room bedroom affair with him — perhaps hoping she could convert him to Mormon fundamentalism in time (?). I witnessed a part of that affair when, while visiting her in 1973, he chanced to drop by.
Mama told her kids and me she was taking her “friend” into her den “to discuss the gospel.” But I was an astute twenty-seven-year-old who had been around the block a few times by then. The sounds coming from her lioness’s den — squeaking springs combined with climactic screams — were not the sounds of discussing the gospel, no matter how exciting the discussion was!
You can view a full list of hunting regulations on the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife website. The main regulations are as follows: You must hunt on designated public lands. You cannot enter private lands to shoot or hunt without the oral or written permission of the landowner, tenant, or person with authority to grant permission. All hunters must wear outer garments of hunter orange color while hunting during daylight hours. Shooting hours for all animals (except raccoons, opossums, and frogs) are during daylight hours only.