From Prima Donna to Roughing It
It was the last day of November, a cool, gray autumn day in New England, and I stuffed the last few items into my old Toyota Corolla, leaving several things next to the dumpster for other tenants to take. I was driving from Beverly, Massachusetts to Florida to look for an apartment west of Daytona Beach, in an area where I had previously lived. I planned to sleep in my car and a makeshift tent as I looked for a permanent place to live. We were in the middle of a pandemic and lots of disinfectants, which caused allergic reactions in me, were being sprayed in motels. People were required by the authorities to social distance, so I wasn’t planning to stay with any friends; I didn’t want to put them at risk of possibly catching a contagious virus.
I drove about ten hours to Pennsylvania, and slept in a truck stop with my driver’s seat pushed way back, and covered myself with blankets. My feet were very cold and numb by the next morning as the temperature was below thirty-two degrees. I knew I had to get as far south as quickly as possible, so I drove another ten hours to Savannah, Georgia the second day. Unbelievably, it was below freezing there as well, and I had to search in my messy trunk to find a fleece blanket to wrap around my insulin so it wouldn’t freeze. I tried to cover my feet better, as I once again slept in my car at a truck stop.
The third day I drove about six hours to central Florida, where it was even chilly there where I slept in my car once again at Love’s truck stop in Ormond Beach. My plan was to camp in central Florida in the area where I had rented many apartments in the past. I had lots of acquaintances in case I ran into trouble. I wanted to camp away from cell tower radiation, as I had been studying the negative ramifications of electromagnetic frequencies. I owned two meters with which to measure EMFs. Personally, I had experienced ears ringing and heart palpitations and insomnia, and had learned that the eight hours of sleep should be as free from EMFs as possible to give your body a respite from all that we are bombarded with during the daytime.
I had bought a used book on Amazon about primitive places to camp in Florida. I referred to this manual, and my memory of places I had hiked in nature in the past. I first camped at Tiger Bay Campground near Daytona Beach. It was a primitive campground with nine wooded sites. I hung up all my blankets on clotheslines to air them out. I met Raymond, who was camping in a tiny home he had built and hauled behind a pickup truck. A tall good-looking gentleman, in his late seventies, who I learned a long time later was a self-made millionaire, he became a great friend as the years went by. We’d meet up a couple times a year on various campgrounds and he’d cook delicious shrimp for me. Three years into my nomadic life he texted me, saying he felt honored to have me in his life, as I often communicated to him about new campgrounds I had discovered. I was only at Tiger Bay a few days, as my EMF meter kept recording frequencies even though I couldn’t see any cell towers.
Unfortunately, most of the campgrounds I had come across in years gone by no longer allowed individual camping, only group camping, such as for boy or girl scouts. I didn’t own a tent, nor had I ever slept in a tent. (I had some PVC pipes and a tarp, which I had been using as a Faraday cage in my previous apartment, to block the electromagnetic frequencies from the cell tower and WIFI close by.) However, I didn’t feel safe from possible predatory humans to sleep outside my car so I continued to sleep in the front seat of my car with the seat reclined, which was not exactly comfortable as my knees kept knocking into the console as I tried to lie in a fetal position with pillows propped around me.
I spent many nights sleeping at the truck stop, and I spent the days around familiar places, grounding myself (a trending health practice entailing walking barefoot, hugging trees, literally touching the earth), sitting on a pillow, my sneakers off and my feet in the sand at sunrise on the actual beach in New Smyrna Beach and eating a picnic breakfast at Sugar Mill Ruins, a historic spot adjacent to woods.
I drove many, many hours on a daily basis, always referring to my camping book. The second campground I stayed at was very difficult to find at first. Hopkins Prairie Campground was down a dirt road two and a half miles off a yellow lined road in Ocala Forest. I kept getting lost and finally an employee at a nearby day-use park with springs to swim in gave me the exact directions to the campground. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. I drove through the campground and fell in love with site 21, near the bat house on stilts. It was wooded and gorgeous and primitive with prairies that reminded me of back home north of Boston. Near the campground entrance there happened to be a table set up with forestry employees taking surveys. I left a couple of things on site 21 and drove back to the pay station to fill out the card and pay the ten-dollar fee.
I met Ed, the camp host, and his little dog Pearl, such a sweetheart. She was fearless around black bears, and had gotten bit twice by rattlesnakes. Ed answered my questions when I approached his RV that first day, and over time he became a good friend, always offering ideas about other places to camp or helping me with car issues. And later, in return, when he was away I’d be “assistant host” helping hikers off the Florida trail to find an overflow spot to spend the night. His elderly dad called me “Marge in charge’. I set up my tarp tent, but continued to sleep in the front seat of my car. Surprisingly the night time temps were in the forties, colder than I had expected. I soon learned the rules for camping in national forests including a fourteen-day limit, at which point one needs to leave for sixteen days before returning.
I did not get good cell service with AT&T as my carrier. I either had to drive twenty minutes down that dirt road full of potholes to be close to a cell tower, or maybe wander around the campground to try to pick up a faint signal. (I would later learn that Verizon is the best carrier to have while traveling in the forests.) On one of my first days at Hopkins Prairie, I walked further out on the prairie to use my phone and met Ben, in his late seventies but certainly not looking his age, soaking up the later afternoon sun. He had spent several decades living in a van as he traveled the country selling textbooks. Since retirement he owned a mobile home in Minnesota and spent the winters camping in a minivan in Florida. We chatted for an hour about astrology and the current conjunction of a few of the planets, which was so beautiful to see over the prairie after sundown.
Ben became a good friend, and through him I met Carol Lena, who became like a sister. In her late seventies, a petite in-shape woman with gorgeous long wavy blonde hair, she doesn’t look a day over fifty. She owns a nice home in southern Florida, is a retired literature college professor and self-published writer. She spends several weeks each year camping at her favorite campground, Hopkins Prairie, sleeps in a tiny tent, pumps water from the hand pump, does yoga in her minivan, loves hiking and watching sunsets, and knows the names of endless birds, reads tarot-like cards and is into astrology. She has camped all over the world, in Hawaiian craters, in Alaska where a brown bear once poked its head into her tent, in Europe and more. She wrote an E-book about camping alone, including her encounter with an alligator crossing her path at Hopkins Prairie.
Thereafter I met Carol Lena’s grown daughter and her grandson, and many other campers. I felt so honored to be part of the “in” crowd of smart, educated campers who came from all over the country. Like Ted, a retired bush pilot in Alaska, who now lived in Illinois and liked kayaking in Florida during the winter months.
I met Dave and Brett, from Wisconsin and Michigan respectively, who one day invited me over for a morning fire. We’ve become good friends over the years. Lean and muscular Dave is an amazing camp cook and a campfire aficionado. Collecting firewood with his toned bare chest and bandana on his head he looks like a Tarzan movie star. Brett is laid back and enjoys searching out live music wherever he lands; he has often helped me with car problems. Ben, Dave and Brett are all avid swimmers of the various nearby springs, and there are certainly lots of springs in the Ocala Forest.
At Hopkins Prairie, I also met Daphne and Peter, a couple my age camping in a high-end Mercedes van, with all the amenities like a shower, water tank, and kitchen sink. Living in North Carolina, they took frequent camping trips along with their rottweiler. From the beginning Daphne and I clicked and we have remained good friends. Sadly, a year or two after meeting them, Peter, a big strapping handsome athletic guy was diagnosed with ALS and they had to discontinue their camping trips, a huge disappointment for them. Rest in peace, Paul.
In January I met John, who like me, was also sensitive to EMFs. He seemed to be much more sensitive than me. As a truck driver cross-country, he was exposed to radiation in the cab as well as at truck stops. When he wasn’t on the road, he enjoyed camping in his RV. He was on vacation for about a month around the time we met. He had been going to Hopkins Prairie since he was a teenager. On a daily basis he would hike and bike on the trails for over fifty miles at a time. He loved swimming in the various nearby springs. He ate healthy. He spoiled me by making me many cups of nettle and dandelion tea and lots of awesome meals. He made me French toast with organic ingredients, and tacos and roasts. More than a month into my camping experience I still had not figured out how I was going to cook and hadn’t even been drinking warm liquids on all those cold days.
John was extremely generous, giving me a two-burner propane stove and a tent, both of which he hardly used. Even though the stove broke shortly after getting it, I was happy to realize that I could tolerate the slight whiffs of propane. I later bought a single burner propane stove which took up less space. I soon made soups every night with lots of dark greens, cans of tuna, salmon or oysters and plenty of olive oil. And of course, garlic, which seemed to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Sometimes when camping alone I would set up both tents, one to store things in and the other to sleep in. John’s tent seemed to keep out the rain better and was designed to keep one warmer, with a rain fly that covered the entire tent.
A big concern before starting my nomadic life was showers. It was a slow learning curve for me. My friends would use showers provided by many a campground but with my multiple chemical sensitivities I couldn’t tolerate the fragrances in the bathrooms. I had always showered and washed my hair almost daily. Now, once weekly, I would find a somewhat private area behind some trees on my campsite, hang up two or three tarps, stand in a dishpan and pour spring water over myself, suds up my hair a couple times, then wash and rinse my entire body. I was never fully relaxed, worried that someone would pop onto my site and see me naked as I dried off. I learned from Daphne about privacy tents and by the next season invested in one. Only about thirty dollars, it was a game changer to have privacy, not only to shower, but for changing my clothes, as my tent was too tiny to really stand in.
I would try to pick the warmest day of the week for my weekly shower. Rarely, I went longer when it was too cold or rainy. Sometimes I utilized the paying showers at Love’s Truck stop in Ormond Beach, expensive at twenty dollars including tip. I didn’t make a habit of this as there were usually lingering soap and shampoo fragrances.
While showering on campsites I had at least two close calls. One time Ed’s dog Pearl came running around my car and tarps when Ed was doing his rounds on foot. I later called her Peeping Pearl. Another time on another campground, as I bathed behind tarps and bushes, a couple walked onto the empty site next to me and aimed binoculars at a bird above me, so I had to quickly duck down.
I had never been a big fan of campfires due to my allergies. I especially reacted to lighter fluid that other campers used. The first time I made a campfire was out of necessity, due to being very cold. That first December, there were often days with twenty-three-degree temps. On Christmas Eve I gave in, and having not prepared with obtaining firewood, I ended up burning an old wood bed frame left behind on site 21.
The second time I made a fire on my own I used store-bought firewood, and dried palm fronds for kindling, and ended up filling the entire campground with smoke at sundown. The wood must have been damp. Later I learned from John how to make a tee-pee fire, and in time I became quite proficient, gathering many dry palm fronds, lots of pine cones which have sap for starter. Ed would give me some lighter-naught with sap which worked great. I would make a fire maybe four mornings in a row, then take a break when the weather warmed up. My coats and hair would reek of smoke for days to come, but a small price to pay for being warm. Most other campers made fires at sundown; I, instead, would just go into my sleeping bag at sundown. (I no longer used only blankets to keep warm at night. Never having been a camper prior in my life, I soon realized why sleeping bags were so effective at holding in body heat especially for my feet.) Of course, I would go to a friend’s campsite sometimes in the evening to socialize around a campfire, and make sure to sit on the side where the smoke didn’t blow into my face.
One night I couldn’t get the fire going and set the logs aside on the sides of the inside of the fire pit. In the middle of the night, I got out of my car to look at the stars and noticed the beautiful copper embers in the fire ring. I thought that another camper had come on my site and made the fire, but later realized the embers must have restarted the fire without human help.
When I first left Massachusetts, I had planned to be in a rented apartment within thirty days. I counted down the days of sleeping in my car. Well, I was still without a home in a month’s time, and on New Year’s Eve I was finally out of a state of terror enough to actually sleep in my tarp “tent” and guess what transpired without my thinking ahead? Fireworks galore came raining down all over the campground. Not over the prairie, or the lake or the trail, but directly over the campground. I hightailed it out of my tent and slept the rest of the night in my car. Or tried to sleep, anyway.
I finally ditched my tarp tent and PVC pipes and purchased a three-person tent at Walmart, and the only thing I used it for was sleeping. Other campers would cook or hang out during the day in theirs. Eventually I bought a four-person tent at Walmart, the Ozark brand. At least I could crouch in it better than the three-person tent. I would put a heavy tarp under the tent, then line the inside with another light weight tarp folded up on the edges to keep rain from possibly soaking my bedding through the tent seams. On colder days I’d put a large tarp over the tent and bolster it down with heavy items like gallon bottles of spring water or large dead tree limbs. It was a lot of work; no wonder I stayed so thin.
I was often quite scared to sleep in my tent, as opposed to my car, often visualizing a possible serial killer slicing and dicing first the thin nylon of my tent, then me. Each time I’d voice my fear to Carol Lena, she’d say, “just breathe through the fear. We’re not meant to die that way.” Of course, I had my doubts, especially as a murder previously occurred at Hopkins Prairie a few decades in the past.
My most favorite times for camping, especially at Hopkins Prairie, were after the party weekends of the locals. Sundays through Thursdays could be heaven on earth on a primitive campground, unless someone was using a generator constantly, or had a dog that barked non-stop. One weekend there were four young guys in a site next to me that used the F word every single sentence for forty-eight hours. If I was on a campground on a weekend, I would make a point of spending the daylight hours either doing errands in town, or exploring historical places or driving around sightseeing. There were beautiful country roads with lots of horses. Ocala is known as the horse capital of the world. I sometimes drove to Love’s truck stop in Ormond Beach and slept in my car to avoid weekend party campers.
Just like I needed private campsites, I had to figure out how to have privacy in the truck stop parking lot to manage as a Type 1 diabetic to get my insulin syringes ready for the next couple of days. I’d sit in my front seat with a cardboard box top “table” on my lap, clean my hands with wipes, sterilize the items with alcohol and proceed to get several syringes filled without attracting attention. I didn’t want anyone to think I was an illicit drug user, but never fail, I’d have everything laid out discretely, and an employee would coincidentally choose those moments to empty the nearby trash can or someone would decide to walk by my car way too close. A few years later I started using insulin pens instead of syringes which caused much less waste, and were easier to handle and made me look less like an illicit drug user.
The stars were so brilliant at Hopkins Prairie, and one could easily see constellations because the campground was not entirely wooded but had open spaces near the small lakes and prairie. Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia were always very evident. I saw many a shuttle taking off from the space coast over the prairie. Ed would let us campers know ahead of time and we’d gather to watch the takeoffs.
At sundown many campers would bring chairs and binoculars to the shed-sized bat house on stilts to watch the gorgeous sunsets over the prairie, and then to witness sometimes hundreds of bats fly out. First one bat, a scout, would fly out, probably checking out the quantity of mosquitoes, then a few minutes later, more bats, then a whole bunch, looking like a swarm of butterflies, flying in every direction, some appearing to fly directly at me. I’d duck at first but finally got the courage to just stand there and realize their sonar would keep them from flying into me. Site 2l often smelled of guano. One time a bat surely startled me when it flew inside my car as I was reaching into my cooler for the makings of supper.
My favorite birds were the large sand hill cranes with the red on their heads. I had seen them before in regular neighborhoods, in twos and threes, just calmly walking around, looking like they were too large to even lift off the ground, never mind fly in formation at heights like they did over the prairie at both sunrise and sunset in larger groups, squawking very loudly.
The barred owls would sound like they’re yelling “who cooks for who?” Carol Lena taught me about the great horned owls. There were tortoises wandering around, sunning themselves outside their holes, or digging in the ground to lay their eggs. I once saw a coral snake on the trail and decided to hike in the other direction. I got to see a rattlesnake close up because, sadly, it had been hit by a vehicle on the dirt road. We all watched as it slowly made its way into the bushes. Then Ed, Ted and another guy discussed who would get the rattles, the head, and the skin after it died. Gross. I was sad and wanted no part of that game!
That first winter of camping was an entire new experience for me. I had never even been a girl scout. I’d tell others that I used to be such a prima-donna. If my old friends could see me now, they would surely be shocked.
Since I was unable to use laundromats due to all the scents, while camping I would wash my lightweight clothes in a plastic wastebasket, rinse and hang on a clothesline on the campsite, which necessitated me choosing the proper type of site initially. Preferably with trees at the back of the site so as not to offend campers walking by. Actually, the way I hung my clothes looked artistically placed with bright colored clothespins. I’d hide my underwear out of respect for others’ sensibilities. Some days were excellent drying days with lots of sun and a strong breeze. However, in Florida it was often humid or rainy. I’d hang the clothes up one day, take them down during damp nights, then rehang the next day, and sometimes a third day, only to have my socks become moldy and need rewashing. I’d buy gallons of the least expensive spring water, as most primitive campgrounds didn’t have water, and if they did, had signs saying no washing. It probably cost about the same as cash coins spent at a laundromat. A few seasons into camping, after surgeries for trigger fingers I realized I needed help wringing out my hand-washed laundry. I invested in a two-and-a-half-gallon salad spinner, which became a huge blessing.
I put about 15,000 miles on my car that first six months of camping, checking out all of central Florida’s campgrounds, paying attention for EMFs, privacy, etc. And looking for a permanent place to live. Per housing authority rules, I had five months to find an apartment, but the pandemic was going on causing people not to move and the housing authority offices were not open to the public.
I was following a medical doctor on-line who advocated alternative healing, living away from emfs, and getting the benefits of the morning sunlight’s infra-red rays. I tried to find his healing location twice, driving to the Panama City area and to Alabama, but had no success. Both times there were lightning storms and tornado watches, and both times I ended up sleeping in my car at Walmart expecting to get carried away like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
I paid thirty dollars at Top Sail Campground, and set up my tent on a nice graveled site out of sight from my car in the parking lot. Then as usual when lightning occurred, I preferred to sleep in my car. I didn’t realize that my site was flooding until daylight when I couldn’t even walk on my site because the water was so deep, and unfortunately, I didn’t have knee high boots. Eventually I got all my wet bedding and blankets out of my tent, and had to throw away a lot of stuff and buy new bedding, because I couldn’t tolerate the chemical scents at the on-site laundromat. I headed back to central Florida, and luckily was able to wash several loads of laundry at a friend’s house.
I camped in Seminole State Forest with my friend John. We shared a huge group site. I didn’t feel totally safe there as I was worried that previous campers might be able to use the same gate code, which was changed only once monthly, or possibly passing the code around to party friends. We were in the middle of the woods far removed from everyone and with no camp host. We couldn’t leave tents and possessions behind to go shopping; one of us had to stay behind.
Another place I camped in Ocala Forest was in the primitive section of Alexander Springs at thirty dollarsa night where one of my nights there was pretty scary. I was in the most primitive loop away from everybody else on a weeknight when an old pickup truck with diesel fumes rattled in after 10 pm. (Quiet time on most campgrounds is ten pm to six am.) I was sleeping in my car that particular night. All I could see were their super bright LED lights as they set up camp. It went on all night. The next morning two creepy guys were smoking cigarettes right in front of my campsite leaving butts all over the dirt road. I moved on from there in a hurry.
I also camped at Juniper Springs in the primitive section away from RVs, at also thirty dollars a night. I finally drove ninety minutes to get a free pass for the disabled which entitled me to half price. Ranger stations closer were not open due to the pandemic. With my new pass I would just be required to pay 15.00 but that was much more than the 5.00 half-price at Hopkins Prairie.
That first year of camping River Road Campground became my second favorite campground. Down a two-mile dirt road with lots of deer, there were only eight sites and I’d have to enter a combination for the lock on the metal gate, which I was given upon making on-line reservations with ReserveAmerica.com. If it got too noisy or smoky on the campground, I’d drive another half mile to the St. John’s River and sit in my beach chair watching the waves lapping as if it were the ocean. I’d wave to boats passing by and walk the birding trail. The first two times I stayed at River Road Campground, one particular family was so loud with their all-night generator, loud pit bull barking, children screaming and pot smoking. It was all very unnerving. Of course, I’d sleep in my car with the windows closed, even after taking a lot of time to set up my tent.
One day I was sitting in my low beach chair on my favorite corner site and three women on horseback were on the trail. The lead horse came to a complete stop. The rider said the horse was afraid of my “disembodied” voice, so I had to stand up and talk nice to the horse, which of course was no skin off my back. I used to own horses and I love horses. As the months went by, I’d purposely camp at equestrian campgrounds.
Ideally, I’d spend fourteen days at Hopkins Prairie and fourteen days at River Road, but in the spring lots of mosquitoes were at River Road. I had to leave for good when I was getting bitten at noon on sunny days, and through my clothes.
There were often mosquitoes even at Hopkins Prairie at dusk and dawn and over time I tried lots of ways to combat them. With my diabetes I felt like I was a magnet with my sweet blood. I’d use citronella candles at supper time. I’d apply natural repellents, wear citronella or geraniol bracelets, use battery operated zappers to swat them, and go to bed early to avoid bites. I never had any luck with the electric hanging lantern bug zappers, returning them to the stores. A couple years later I finally invested in a screen tent to surround the picnic table. It was time-consuming to set up and take down. And I’d get bitten when carrying my food items from the car to the table, zipping and unzipping the tent flaps. If I’d get too many bites and itched like crazy I’d take Zyrtec, an antihistamine, which helped immensely.
There were many ticks at Hopkins Prairie and I followed all measures to avoid getting bit, tucking my pants into my socks, avoiding deeper brush areas and checking my entire body daily. At Alexander Springs, I found a tick embedded in my thigh. A few weeks later I had a thumbprint size mark. I asked several people whether “the ring” around a bite indicating possible Lyme disease would be the size of a doughnut or the size of a thumbprint, to which I never got a clear answer, but the photos online looked like the red ring could be much smaller than I had previously thought.
I also camped on a friend’s property in Burnsville, North Carolina that first spring. I fell in love with the downtown, which was not boarded up like other small towns I passed through. It was way too cold for me in April at that higher elevation so I backtracked to where temps were warmer, and stayed at a wonderful horse campground in South Carolina called Brickhouse Campground. It was only $2.50 per night. It was close to the main highway and not down a long dirt rutted road, but still quiet enough. There were amazing hiking trails and dogwood and other flowering trees.
I was there for a few days when I started experiencing diarrhea after a 24-hour period of severe headache and joint pain. I somehow managed to drive an hour to Whole Foods to buy charcoal and probiotics. My symptoms didn’t improve and I became too weak and dizzy to drive. The handsome young man from the local pharmacy in Whitmire drove to the campground on his day off to bring me insulin because mine must have gone bad from the heat, a thermometer and free adult diapers, just in case. What an amazing young man, that son of the pharmacy’s owner!!! Thank you so much!
I asked the female ranger if I could pay to stay an extra few days because I was too sick to drive. She was none too happy but finally begrudgingly acquiesced. I was at a loss for what to do. I met another camper, Linsey, who was so kind and helpful. She told me where the hospital was and the back roads to get there. And that is what I did the next day, after throwing away my tent, tarps, hair dryer, and other camping items. I never wanted to camp again. I somehow managed to get myself together and drove very carefully, dizziness and all, to the hospital thirty minutes away, and went into the ER. I was freezing the next four hours. I was told I had traveler’s diarrhea and sent on my way around suppertime. I got permission to sleep in my car overnight in the hospital parking lot.
The next morning, feeling lightheaded and nauseous, I somehow managed to drive several hours north, because I simply wanted to be back in my home state of Massachusetts. In Virginia, I got a hotel room, took a shower, dealt with unpleasant fragrances, felt nauseous and just wanted to sleep. Then I got up the next day and drove another couple of hours, frequently pulling off the road to rest. I finally bought a cup of coffee with caffeine, which I’ve probably never had in my entire life, as even supposedly low caffeine products make me too hyper. After trying to nap in my car during the afternoon I drove to an ER where I waited a couple hours. When my name was finally called, I was so weak that the nurse had to get a wheelchair for me.
I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, sepsis, and multiple organ issues. I was in intensive care two nights. On constant fluids and antibiotics and Mucinex. I was finally diagnosed with ehrlichiosis and Lyme disease. I needed to take doxycycline for three weeks. After my being there six days, I was discharged with only an hour’s notice. A lot of supplements and food were ruined in my car after sitting in the hot sun that entire week, as I was not allowed to leave the hospital building. My ankles were so swollen from all the IV fluids I had a difficult time driving, and each time I stopped to relieve myself at a rest area, my legs were so wobbly I had trouble walking. I slept that night at a truck stop, and then got to Massachusetts the following day.
Luckily my ex-boyfriend, Patrick, with whom I’ve remained friends the last couple decades let me stay at his house, where I bartered for free room and board in exchange for cleaning, decorating, shopping, cooking and helping him with his dog Pogo. I had lost ten pounds, which for me is way too much as I am thin already. A month later, as I washed my hair, I was surprised to see it coming out in bunches like strands of embroidery thread. The next week another quarter of my hair fell out. All in all, I lost probably ninety percent of my hair. I was devastated. For the entire following year, I wore my hair in a skimpy pony tail. Carol Lena didn’t recognize me when we met up again at Hopkins Prairie.