Trouble getting past the guilt and shame of being "wrong"?

There are certain kinds of Facebook posts that I scroll on by: self-righteous rants, and anyone using guilt and shame or pity to motivate their readers to act a certain way. Every one of your lives is a gift. My own life is a gift.

We imperfect humans carry too many rerun episodes of You did this wrong, you did that wrong, you unworthy you running on looping tracks in our heads. I don't need to add more to that baggage of guilt I carried around far too long.

Some of that shame and regret goes all the way back to when we were children. Regardless of our age, sometimes it stemmed from an unfortunate choice we made, and sometimes it came from a situation completely beyond our control. All of it, though, was just because we humans were never intended to be perfect and right all the time.

And since when does finger wagging condescension really truly ever work? It's just basically someone getting something off their chest that is probably best done alone with oneself--with one's own soul. Then one has more chance of addressing the core energy of the matter.

One of my favorite acts of Fonzi in "Happy Days" was his trouble with saying, "I was wr...wr-wr-ong." I appreciated it because it made me laugh at my own very human inner struggle with having been wrong in some way or another. According to the tapes playing over and over in my mind, I've probably been more wrong than right. Those cringing inner feelings of guilt and shame have kept me drawing all sorts of "wrong ways to be"--ways I don't want to be--to myself.

I got old-looking--saggy and wrinkled. I got chubby, and no amount of exercise or watching what I ate changed much. I had a scar emerge on my cheek that was a reminder of my ugliness, up front and center, every fricken time I looked in a mirror. My hair got blah. I felt an inner revulsion of myself when I studied all this wrongness about me in the mirror. Seeing myself in photos made me wish for a magic eraser to erase me out of the picture completely.

And then I'd look deep into the teary eyes of that human in that mirror--the one who tried so damn hard to be right and good and kind, and attractive--the whole package. The one who tried so hard to be a standard of the new consciousness free being.

Yes, I saw my very true and real beauty, too. The beauty that my soul sees. The courage that it takes to be the imperfect human. That deep unconditional love it takes to keep going everyday in a human body that emits icky smells and substances that we work so hard to deal with--that we feel so embarrassed about.

And then to top it off, someone that we love and admire so dearly, tells us that something we did was "just wrong." We were guilty of being wrong and that was selfish and no way to be. "Don't do that! Don't be that!" So inside, I'd just shrivel with shame.

I tried to mentally handle the guilt from that, too, by rationalizing that I was right and they were wrong--but that just kept me in an unresolved loop of internal argument, because, depending on the point of perspective, we were both right and wrong. And most importantly--I still felt guilty.

And from my soul's perspective--it was neither a right or a wrong and didn't matter, because this human experience was just a playground of contrasts for "Let's Pretend" acts of consciousness. This human experience allows my soul to experience itself and its creations. I know I am a gift to my soul, especially in all my messiness.

While mentally, I understood all of this, I was still managing to manifest a whole lot of feeling like I was wrong in some way. It's exhausting trying to juggle all that guilt and shame.

Then yesterday, while feeling into "I create without agenda, and I dive into my creation to feel and explore and experience it," my frustrated feelings surrounding an old repetitious story of being at odds with a group of people that I loved popped in. I rehashed the whole I'm right and they're wrong scenerio, and why I had them playing this betrayer-like part for me, when it finally struck me:

I was feeling SELF-DOUBT. I was FEELING guilt and shame at possibly having been wrong.

When I closed my eyes and felt into myself while regarding this story: 

I realized I was shrinking my energy field inward, closing myself off, instead of opening myself up. 

When I'm open, suggestions about what could be my truth don't stick to me and my reality. They flow on through and by.

I lay on the couch, closed my eyes, and practiced telling myself all the ways I was wrong, and with each one, I breathed and opened myself up to allowing myself to have been all those wrong ways of being. It was so easy to do. It's still so easy to do. I'm grinning with how easy it is to do. Suddenly, I was no longer feeling emotionally triggered at having been wrong--I was no longer reacting to feeling ashamed. It was nothing at all...There was no charge to spark a manifestation in my reality.

When I am judged (by myself or by an external other) as being WRONG, EVIL, DARK, SELFISH, UGLY--anything and everything I don't want to be--I close my eyes and open wide.

Deep inside I open myself wide instead of shrinking into a tight, protective, defensive, rationalizing self-righteous ball of GUILT and SHAME and DOUBT.

I close my eyes
I open and expand my field of energies--
And I just allow myself to BLOSSOM OPEN beginning from the inside out:
"I was wrong." (I breathe and feel myself OPEN). 
"I was dark." ( I breathe myself OPEN). 
"I was evil that time--no excuse for it."(I breathe myself OPEN). 
"I am chubby." (I breathe and feel myself OPEN).
"I am ugly." (I breathe myself OPEN).

The charge, the trigger of guilt and shame is gone.

I am whatever I choose to resonate with...I have done it all in order to gain compassionate wisdom for my passionate soul.

No more prisons of Guilt and Shame for having been a deep-asleep, terrified, stinky, conniving to survive, all-alone, unworthy-feeling little human.

Of course, I got it wrong...and INSIDE, I'm FINALLY feeling okay with that.

Should I stay or should I go?

"Should I stay or should I go?"

Go ahead, sing the above line along with The Clash. Feel into it...

Don't worry--this won't make you suicidal. If anything, it will calm away any suicidal thoughts.

Choosing to stay here embodied on Earth, or choosing to leave for the other side of the Veil of Forgetting (to die).

This one little choice made in full conscious awareness was a life-changer for me. It changed my perception of life and, therefore, it changed my reality.

And, while I chose to stay, I realize now that it didn't matter which choice I made. There is no right or wrong answer here. Because, either way, simply asking and honestly feeling into answering the question made me more present in my current reality. In that moment I was embodied. I was still going to live life more fully whether I embraced being here and enjoying my human life, or whether I was living each moment as though it were my last.

...and...you can always make a different choice. You're not locked in to one or the other. Some days I felt like leaving, but more and more I found myself choosing to stay because it felt like I was onto something magnificent and new, and I didn't want to miss out. It's more about realizing you have a choice.

Whenever, wherever consciousness is present, life blossoms into beingness.

Ascended Master Tobias, channelled by Geoffrey Hoppe of crimsoncircle.com noted in one of the shouds that many of us Shaumbra were in a state of being more out-of-body than here in it. We were finding life among other deep-asleep, programmed humans quite challenging. We'd been through personal traumatic experiences. I'd lost both my mom and my dad by this time. He invited us to answer this question in order to more fully anchor ourselves here--to stay embodied while we were alive on Earth in human form. We weren't doing ourselves, or anyone else much good by being wishy-washy about being here.

Recently I realized that many of our loved ones who suffer from what is called dementia and alzheimers are pretty much doing the same thing as I once was. Many of them have suffered traumatic losses in their human experiences--maybe having lived long enough to have lost all their peers and friends to the other side of the Veil. Maybe they've lost children or a spouse. Maybe there is a deeply wounded aspect that they strongly identified with and didn't know how to release from their life. Whatever the cause, the outcome has been the same: They aren't staying embodied.

And when we aren't consciously present in these physical bodies, that neglect opens the door to physical and emotional and mental decay and disease.

People suffering from dementia are often their happiest when out in the Near-Earth Realm visiting with their friends who have crossed over. Consciousness is eternal. It lives on whether it has a body or not. These people are actually having a REAL multi-dimensional experience. They've created it.

The only problem is that they don't know that they are the Creator and that they have A CHOICE in how they perceive their created experience. They don't know that they can be fully embodied humans here...and...explore all their many mansions of created realities at the same time. They can both whole-heartedly interact with friends and loved ones who have passed and with those who are still here. I do it all the time. We've been looking at all of this from a perspective of something is wrong. 

Our culture of medicine diagnoses them with these disease labels, and then we watch them slowly decay as their loved ones look on feeling helpless to connect with them. I watch their loved ones enjoyment of their own lives get hijacked by being centered around the perceived suffering of one.

Maybe, just maybe, all these people who have lived and died through these perceived illnesses have been helping us become aware of the more that we each are. What gift are they bearing me in being exactly as they are? I have chosen to let my old limiting identity go, too. Is there really any difference here?

One thing I do know, without a doubt anymore, I sit up each morning in bed and I say, "I am here!"

And most days, even if I feel a bit or a lot of pain, I'm still grinning with that choice to be!

This is my life, these are my creations, and I am diving into experiencing all that I create and all that I am!

When it comes to being loved, what am I radiating?

Words and an indifferent attitude can cut much deeper than any knife or physical weapon.

But because it's not a potential physical injury, I haven't been aware of putting up a protective shield around myself. And that protective barrier--that unconscious radiation from the creator of my own reality--has kept me stuck in attracting a love so distorted I can't even really call it love.

This has nothing to do with my mate or family or any other loved ones--not really. They are all just playing roles that I set up for them to play for me. They are my outer world energies in service to me by reflecting back to me what's going on within me, what I'm radiating out as my truth of the moment.

I am the sovereign creator of my own reality, and I am the only one who can truly change it--and thankfully so. Even though I released the karma on which our old relationships were based, it still runs the show until all of the old stories are distilled into wisdom and integrated into my soul. It takes time to become aware of your aspects, too numerous to even attempt to count.

All I ever wanted was to be loved just because I exist--to have someone really see and adore me as I see and love them--where they just can't help wanting to sweetly kiss me no matter where we are. Where they like to be with me because we love who and how we are when we're together.

I realize now that I've been attracting and standing in a pile of contrast when it came to love because the purchase order I've been radiating out to the energies that serve me has been "wanting" to be loved--and so that's what I've been getting. Wanting, wanting, wanting...and a whole lot of indifference and criticism.

And that judgment of failing at being the perfect human for someone else, their indifference, that feeling of being taken for granted has cut me to the core. It's been hell. It's been cruel. There is no safe feeling. I feel a deep sadness and my energies nose-dive and curl up into a ball.

I didn't want to have to tell the other person that this is what I want from them because it's icky to realize they are just "going through the motions" trying to appease me, the whiner. That conditional love is not what I desire. I choose to be loved unconditionally, spontaneously and whole-heartedly. The other is a just watered down human melodrama.

So, how do I change my experience, one that feels as though it's been going on for eons, not only for myself but for most of humanity?

I take a deep breath. I use my  secret "magic wand" gesture or say my secret magic word that I've come up with on my own, that I've practiced using over and over, that reminds me to open up my radiation and my field of energies. I drop my guard and protective barrier. I am the source and center, the creator of this, my reality--quit acting like I am a victim of my own creation!!! I open, open, open...

And I remember: I am okay. We are all okay. I AM loved! I always have been and always will be in all my ways-- first and foremost by Creator me!

Just stay relaxed and open...all is truly well in all of Creation.

Little One, Come Out! Be Free!

Little One
Words and music by Penny Lewton Binek


Little One--come out, be free!
Little One--come and play with me!
It's all right--let your secrets unfold,
Cry the tears of pain you've tried to hold.
Come to Me, I'll hold you tight,
And the darkness I'll not let bite.
Shout your anger! Vent your fears--
FEEL your sadness and your sorrows,
Then watch them disappear...

Little One, come fly with me!
I've loosed your shackles--guilt, shame and misery.
Little One, come let your spirit soar
Through wondrous places you've never dreamed before...
(Instrumental)

Little One, come sing with me--
We have a song, a glorious melody.
Little One, come lift your heart in song
Giving thanks for all parts played,
Whether right or seeming wrong.
Hear the thunder, hear the ROAR--
A celebration like we've never felt before!!

Little One, at last you're free!
Little One, come and dance with me.
It's all right--you've let your story be told.
And in the Light of Day, behold!
You're a wonder!
Life's a gift!--
A celebration of ALL THAT IS.
Though you stumble, though you fall--
When it all is said and done,
All there is--
IS LOVE!

All there is IS LOVE, Little One.
All there is IS LOVE, Little One.
All there is Is Love, Little One--
How you've grown into my sun/son!

A Breath of Fresh Realization

I am writing this to help myself anchor this realization. It makes me smile and not take myself so seriously. I love when I loosen up--the best things seem to happen then, and they have been ever since this understanding blossomed.

Our eyes are the greatest deceivers.

Close your eyes and take a good deep, down-into-your-lower-ribcage breath.

Open your eyes and now look all around you--including your body.

All of your reality, everything, is merely a SUGGESTION of what can be. It does not have to be WHAT IS.

We were living--acting out--a hypnotic suggestion...that's all. Pretty much the same as a hypnotist telling a volunteer that he is a chicken--and he accepts that suggestion as his truth, and he flaps, struts and clucks about like a chicken.

Stop Fighting with Cancer--Use It as a Tool for Greater Self-Awareness

Stop fighting cancer!

I cannot say this loudly enough. I know you feel like you're supporting yourself or loved ones when you jump onto the "Fight this Disease" bandwagon, but you aren't aware that you're actually supporting it staying manifested in reality by struggling and fighting with it.

Fighting cancer is like a fly getting caught in a spider's web. The more it struggles, the more the web attaches its sticky self to the fly, the more trapped the fly becomes, until it's nothing but an empty carcass from which the spider has drained the life.


Shift your point of perspective.

View the cancer as a gift--a TOOL you gave yourself in order to open up your understanding of who you really are--to wake yourself up--and to gain wisdom for your soul.

Lie down in a comfortable position, close your eyes, take some good deep-into-your-diaphragm breaths (beneath your lower ribcage):
Inhale through your nose: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Hold that breath: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Exhale through your mouth: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
And FEEL into your body. Feel the beating of your heart.

Do a body scan:

Am I feeling tightness in my shoulders, jaws, limbs, back? Take a breath to release it and let the tightness melt away.

Am I feeling pain anywhere? Take another breath and explore and FEEL into the pain, allowing it to guide you to its source and center.

Let the pain tell you its story. Don't judge your feelings and thoughts--let it all out! Icky painful, fearful, angry, sad, regretful feelings and thoughts allowed in your own safe and sacred space won't harm anyone. Let yourself cry, scream, hold yourself. There is no such thing as the right or wrong way to be and feel here:
I am listening...
I am FEELING it all through...
I am allowing myself to just be however...
No more monitoring, no more trying to control or force things...

You actually have never done anything wrong.

No one, no other god out there is punishing you. You just got momentarily lost in a story--an act of consciousness. You haven't done anything wrong in bringing cancer into your life--you just FEEL as though you have.

This disease is in your life as part of getting yourself to ALLOW unrelenting self-forgiveness. It's helping you REALIZE the importance of self compassion--of being kind to oneself for simply being an imperfect human. All of us humans have done dark things because of having such a limited consciousness--we were all just trying to survive in a world where we believed we had to fight and struggle in order to live and be abundant. No more pointing fingers of blame and judgment. We all were just doing the best we knew how to at the time, trying to find our way while feeling so lost, so scared, so alone.

This shift in perspective will help you make decisions on the treatments you choose to use to address the physical symptoms--and you can't make a wrong choice from this place of expanded self-awareness. Whatever you choose is appropriate because you're now ALLOWING your energies to serve you in grace. Instead of radiating out armor and shields and weapons which attract something for you to then fight, your consciousness is open and allowing, and these aggressive energies just flow on by now without attaching themselves to you.

You exist--eternally! You are conscious awareness. You are light. You are here out of love.

We are ALL here out of love, and it's unto love we all return.

Please stop fighting--wars don't work anymore. Have you noticed?

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Nation's Center News Article: Meet Your Neighbor: Frank Lewton

 Meet Your Neighbor: FRANK LEWTON

By Linda Stephens

NATION'S CENTER NEWS

Buffalo, SD

Articles from Wednesday, December 5 & 12, 1984 editions.

Reprinted by Penny Binek with permission from Wally Stephens. (Mick Lewton)

Friday, November 30, 1984, I finally got together with Frank to do his interview. We have tried to get together several times over the last ten months, but every time we had an interview scheduled, Frank would call and postpone it as something would come up. Actually, I think he was trying to avoid me, but finally just gave in…

Frank was the oldest of 12 children born to Jennie Alice (Gorman) and John William Lewton. Only seven of the twelve children grew to adulthood. They are as follows:

Frank Gorman was born June 28, 1907 in Omaha, NE. (continued later).

Florence Katherine was born May 12, 1909. She married Harold Gunn and they live southwest of Lemmon, SD on a ranch. They have one son and two daughters. Their son Vince is the County Agent for Perkins County.

Cecil Clare (May 12, 1911--Dec. 25, 1911) died of spinal meningitis.

Jessie Lorena was born Dec. 16, 1912 in Liberty, IL. Jessie married Ralph Berg (deceased--summer 1984). They lived in Hettinger, ND and he worked at the Farmers Union Station. They had 10 children—1 deceased. Jessie now lives with a son in Grand Forks, ND.

John Maurice was born August 9, 1914. He ranched near Chance, SD

(south of Bison) for many years. He was known to many area folks as the “watermelon man” as he would sell watermelons all over the area including Buffalo on Labor Day. He is now retired, living in Rapid City, SD. His present wife is Thelma Eichenbruger. He has eight children.

Lyle Bernard was born June 8, 1916. He married Katherine Hunt. They were both killed May 10, 1970 in an automobile accident north of Bowman on the county line. They had 13 children, 12 of which are living. They lived on the old Holman ranch 8 miles northwest of Camp Crook. After their death their son Larry came home from the service and took care of all the kids and saw to it that they got through school.

George William was born June 4, 1918. He married Bernice Palmer (divorced). He is retired, living in Tucson, AZ. He has 5 children.

Alan Mason was born Feb. 11, 1920 and died Feb. 16, 1920 of heart trouble.

Henry “Woodrow” was born April 1, 1921. Woodrow married Elizabeth Exman and they live on a ranch near 

Lodgepole, SD. They have one son and one daughter.

Ralph Edson was born Dec. 4, 1922 and died Dec. 13, 1922 of heart trouble.

Eugene Paul was born Sept. 18, 1924 and died Feb. 5, 1926 of whooping cough.

Jerome was born Dec. 15, 1927 and died Dec. 15, 1927 of heart trouble.

John and Jennie Lewton were married at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on September 5, 1905, and then went to Omaha, NE where John worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. He was a finish carpenter working on the Pullman cars. Jennie had taught school a few years before they were married, but afterwards worked as a housewife.

The Interior Department decided to open up about three million acres of free land to homesteaders. Anyone with fourteen dollars filing fee and enough money to put up a homestead shanty could file on 160 acres of free land. If you qualified with the regulations of building a one-room shanty, digging a well, breaking five acres of land, and living on this claim 14 months, you would own your claim. At this time John was earning $100 per month from the railroad, and the idea of homesteading appealed to him.

In the fall of 1907 John came to Hettinger, ND to locate some land. His homestead was located south of Lodgepole, SD on the south side of the South Grand River on the old T.X. Trail that led from Bismarck, ND to Belle Fourche, SD. All mail for the early settlers in this area first came to Belle Fourche and someone would ride or drive horses down for it. Later a post office was established at the Fred Nelson’s Sidney Store, and it was here the Lewtons got their mail and groceries from 1909 until 1914. From 1914 to 1922 their mail came to Strool, SD. Then in 1923, after moving across to the north side of the river and building a new home, their mail was changed to Lodgepole, SD. Both Sidney and Strool have been discontinued as post offices.

In the spring of 1909 Jennie and her young son, Frank, came by railroad to Hettinger, ND where they were met by John. They then rode out to the claim in a lumber wagon. They lived with Jennie’s brother, Maurice Gorman, who had been in South Dakota since 1896, running cattle on the wild open prairies with no fences and no owned land.

While John and Jennie were building their sod house, they had to keep an umbrella over Frank to keep him dry as the weather was rainy. The lumber for their roof came from Sturgis, SD. Frank said, “It was a one-room shack with a portiere (hanging cloth) dividing the room. Now I suppose you’d call it drapes or a curtain, but then we called it a portiere. We also had a cook stove that burned both coal and wood. There also weren’t any fences in the area, only a little one for the horses.”

Frank continued, “My uncle Maurice Gorman had come from Quincy, IL and his wife Anna was from Iowa. They settled on the only land in the area where cottonwood trees were growing. We lived about ¾ mile from each other. In 1911, during the drought they moved back to Iowa in a covered wagon. They had 5 children, but now the whole family is dead. Their children died when they weren’t very old.”

In 1909 there was a terrible prairie fire that started in the Slim Buttes and burned to the South Grand River. The fire burned right beside John’s sod house and pole corral. There was also a terrific wind along with the fire. Jennie went out to watch the fire. She was wearing a new bonnet at the time and a gust of wind blew it off her head. The bonnet was blown high into the air and across the prairie it went. She never recovered her bonnet.

John needed a team of horses, so in the spring of 1908 he took his last $300 and went over to Doc Hodge’s ranch in the Slim Buttes and bought his first team. Frank was very proud of that team. Now John would be able to farm and also have a means of transportation. The horses were high spirited, but John was a young man and figured he could handle them. He got his field plowed with a one-furrow plow that he walked behind and held onto the handles. But, when it came to harrowing the plowed ground that was another matter. John got in front of the team to fix the harness when something spooked them and they ran away and pulled the drag over him. There was no doctor or hospital but John eventually recovered from the ordeal.

The drought of 1911 was hard enough to battle, but sickness and death were much worse. Their little daughter Cecil Clare came down with spinal meningitis. Dr. Frank Walker of Bison, SD had been out to the ranch home several times to treat her, but she didn’t get any better. Finally on Christmas Eve, she was in such pain that John set out with the team and wagon to bring Dr. Walker. It was a forty mile trip. He reached Bison with no trouble, but on the homeward journey it was so dark and hard to see that the horses got out of the trail and ran through a barbed wire fence, nearly cutting the leg off one of the horses. Dr. Walker and John took the remaining horse and rode double to the Lewton home. Nothing the doctor could do helped and she died on Christmas Day, December 25, 1911. Because at that time graveyards were so far away, she was buried on the Lewton ranch where she still lies.

Through the years times improved, but still there were hardships. The Lewton children had to cross the South Grand River in order to drive seven miles to school by horse and buggy. There was no bridge across the river. One night in early spring, Florence, Jessie, John and Lyle were returning from school. The river was high and floating with ice, and some ice was just breaking up. When they tried to cross the swollen river, the horse floundered, broke through the ice, swam, went down, and finally got the cart turned around so he could swim downstream with the current until they finally made it back to shore where they had started. Taking a sixteen mile detour by the Sidney Bridge, they finally reached home to be greeted by frantic parents. Florence wrote a poem about this tragedy called “That Wicked River.”

In 1923 John and Jennie built a modern home on the north side of the South Grand River and built up a fine herd of Hereford cattle.

Frank said, “We went to school part time at our house and mother taught us. Sometimes we stayed at the school house with a teacher. We had a hard time getting to school.”

In 1929 the Great Depression began when so many banks closed and the depositors lost a lot of money. The prices of cattle, grain and sheep were very cheap. Wheat sold for 25 cents a bushel. In 1934 the government bought the cattle, sheep and hogs from the farmers and had them slaughtered and thrown into a deep trench and buried. The government paid $20 a head for cattle over two years old and $8 for calves. John took a lot of cattle to Hettinger, ND and sold them to the government at these prices. He also sent a car load of the best steers to Chicago and received $23 each. John and his sons also helped slaughter sheep at the sheep ranches and brought home carcasses to feed his hogs. Because of the extreme drought there was very little feed for hogs or stock of any kind, so farmers and ranchers were forced to sell their stock to the government.

John was stricken with a fatal heart attack on August 23, 1956, at Bismarck, ND where he had gone for a checkup. Jennie continued to operate the 666 Ranch with the help of her son Woodrow until the fall of 1971, when she decided to quit ranching and sold her cattle. She then made her home with her daughter Florence, and son-in-law, Harold Gunn until her death December 26, 1976.

While Frank was growing up he raised a little over an acre of onions each year. Frank said, “One of the first things Dad did when he came here was to build a dam along with my uncle Maurice Gorman. Each year Dad plowed me up a patch of ground where it was flood irrigated. We’d put the onions on a new plot every year, but the big problem was weeds. The flood water would bring every kind of weed imaginable. At that time we couldn’t get onion sets but planted them all from seed. An onion seed looks like a buckwheat seed—it is a 3-cornered seed but about half the size of a buckwheat seed. I sold the onions as soon as they were big enough to neighbors, people in town and the Fair in Lemmon. My onion patch provided me with quite a bit of spending money in those days.”

Frank recalled seeing his first automobile. “I was about 5-6 years old and had never seen anything come in,” stated Frank, “without horses pulling it. I looked at the hill and here came the mail carrier in a white car. I just couldn’t believe what I saw! I walked around the car two to three times looking for the horses! Then about 3-4 years later, the mail man got some old trucks and used them to deliver the mail in.”

Jello was also quite a novelty item for Frank. Frank chuckled, “The first time I can remember seeing jello was when the Fred Nelson’s had it for dinner. They ran the Sidney Post Office, and I just couldn’t believe it. I was about 6-8 years old and all we had ever had before was gelatin. How here was jello with all those colors! I remember that Mom sent to Sears & Roebuck and got jello. It was really a treat!”

The flu epidemic spread over the country in 1918. Frank was 11 years old and had driven a wagon load of hogs to Hettinger with his dad. It was a 2-day trip and when they got back Frank’s dad and then the whole family came down with the flu, all except Frank. Frank said, “I had to feed the cows and pitch hay over the fence. I know I sure thought it was lots of cows that I had to feed. When my dad got well, he went around the neighborhood and helped many people. I know it was because of my dad that many people made it through the flu epidemic. Dad’s remedy was to fry up big gobs of onions and make an onion poultice. He would put the onions in a flannel cloth and put it on their chest. He also had them drink hot jello water.”

Frank attended Hettinger High starting in 1922 and graduating in 1926. During 3-1/2 of those high school years he worked at Hancock’s Drug Store. Frank said, “I did everything from keeping the furnace to helping make prescriptions. One day I was making up 1 lb. packages of Epsom salts and alum. I had them sitting side by side in two piles, but hadn’t marked which was which. In those days heavy-set ladies would use Epsom salts in their bath water which was supposed to help them reduce their weight. A rather heavy-set lady came in to purchase Epsom salts and the druggist grabbed a package of alum and sold it to her instead. Later she told how she had put it in her tub and it had puckered her up like a prune. I sure felt badly about it, but it wasn’t my fault really as the druggist didn’t ask me which pile to get the Epsom salt from.”

After high school graduation, Frank came home to work with his dad. Sometimes he took the younger children to school and that was a good excuse to meet the new schoolteacher—Pearl Myrtle Allinson. Frank also decided that it would be the neighborly thing to do if he would occasionally stop and help her build the fire in the school house stove. It wasn’t too long before Frank was dating the young school marm.

Pearl had a younger sister Opal who was attending college in Aberdeen, so in May 0f 1928, Pearl and Frank decided to drive to Aberdeen and visit her. Frank said, “We had a nice trip down. That evening was beautiful and everyone was sitting outside visiting. The next day we left to go home. We got almost to Mobridge when the wind hit. All we had was side curtains on the car and it got so dusty and dirty we could hardly breathe. I think we drove off in the worst field we could find and we sat there for almost 2 hours in the car. We had our good clothes on and when we finally drove into Mobridge we looked like a couple of mud hens with just slits for our eyes. There was just a little sprinkle of rain, enough to make the dirt stick to you. We really looked a sight! To make matters worse, here we weren’t married and had to check into the hotel and get a couple rooms to take a bath and clean up. You never could imagine any two people coming into a hotel looking like that!” Frank continued, “I know some of your readers will remember that same wind that hit the Camp Crook area in 1928. The wind blew 80-90 mph and it tore some of those big trees off the ridges that had been there for 200 years. It blew lots of lumber down in the Long Pine Hills. Later, after Pearl and I were married, we moved to Camp Crook and I cut a lot of that timber for our own wood. We also made pitch pine posts out of the hearts of many of the large trees that were blown over.”

Pearl Myrtle Allinson was born in Adair, Oklahoma Territory, before it was a state, to Anna (Ridgeway) and Curtis Allinson. She had no birth certificate as she was born on the Indian reservation. Her parents moved to Harding County in the early 1900’s and homesteaded on the south side of the Grand River right north of the Slim Buttes. They had a sheep ranch and finally lived in an old log house on the river where Claude Olson lived for awhile. 

Jim and John Ridgeway, her mother’s brothers, also lived nearby. John was married but had no family. Jim was married and Charles, Betty and Fern were his children.

In 1917 the Allinson’s moved to a ranch just 1mile east and ½ mile south of Bowman, ND where Frank presently lives today. They ran sheep here, and also north of town, south of Marmarth and north of Camp Crook in South Dakota.

In 1917 Anna and Curtis took their two girls Pearl and Opal with them to go check on the sheep. There was something wrong with the car so Curtis took it to the Sampson Garage and they gave him another car to use. The shifting gears weren’t the same and Curtis had a hard time getting used to driving it. They camped all night on a 40- foot bank overlooking the Little Missouri River. They got up, ate breakfast, and all piled into the car to start for home. Curtis started the car but pushed the wrong pedal and instead of going 

into reverse, it went forward and plunged 40 feet into the river. They were all crippled 

except Pearl. She walked to the Ray Miller ranch to get help. As a result of the 

accident Curtis spent the next 17 years of his life in bed as he broke his back and was 

paralyzed from the waist down. 

           Anna took care of Curtis until 1936 when she died from Tularemia. She had taken Dean and Gene Lewton, her grandchildren, up on the Buttes behind their house and had gotten a tick. The tick gave her this disease which is normally associated as “rabbit sickness.”

After Anna’s death, a lady by the name of Lucy Wolf began taking care of Curtis who was an invalid. She got a trailer house and pulled it with a car. She took him on trips around the country and made several trips to Florida where Curtis’s father was living. They would stay in Orlando, FL during the winter and come back here in the summer. Curtis died the day before Christmas in 1941.

Pearl’s sister Opal attended high school in Bowman and then college in Aberdeen. She married Homer Cornell (Carl’s son—from Buffalo) and they lived at Fort Yates for many years where he worked in Indian service. They later moved to Bismarck where he worked for the State Highway Department. They have now retired and live in California near Sacramento. They have two children. Their son, Alan, is a professor at Berkley University near San Francisco, and their daughter, Joan, is married and lives in Fargo, ND where they own Scheel’s Hardware.

Pearl attended college in Dickinson for part of a year. She then taught the Ridgeway School east of Buffalo. She then went to Aberdeen and got her teaching certificate. The next year she taught the Fredlund School in Perkins County near Lodgepole. After teaching a year, she and Frank decided to get married. They were married July 2, 1928 in Baker, MT. Frank’s sister, Florence, went along and was their witness. Frank said, “It seems about everyone in those days drove to Baker and got married. I had a brand new Ford Sport Coupe Model A car that I had bought in Hettinger for $700. I had it all shiny and polished. While driving near Griffin, ND on the way home, another car hit a big mud hole just as we passed by and plastered my car. That sure made me mad!”

Frank and Pearl went to the Black Hills on their honeymoon. Frank said, “Everywhere we went, somebody would run us down to look at that car. It was a new model and they hadn’t seen anything like it.”

Pearl and Frank lived with his parents that summer and the fall of 1928 they moved 12-13 miles north of Camp Crook. They lived across the creek from the Otto Burghduffs. Frank said, “That first winter was the worst time. We lived in a little tar paper shack. It had plain boards on the outside and red and blue building paper on the inside with a little cook stove. Alice Goggins, a lady who lived in Rapid City, had said we could rent this place from her. She had a nice house there and was going to have it fixed up. She bought finish lumber, but not the windows, so we couldn’t live in the house. First we lived in the granary and then we got into this 8x10 shack that sat kind of kiddy wampus. Alice had 25-30 head of horses that I was to take care of, but there wasn’t much to do.”

In the spring of 1929 Frank visited with Gilbert Osheim, a bachelor, to see if they could rent his place. Gilbert’s mother lived in Kalispell, MT and he said they’d have to talk to her. Mrs. Osheim decided they could rent the place, but Gilbert didn’t have any place to live, so he moved in with them and slept upstairs. Frank said, “Gilbert was just out of the service and was very bashful. I think if any girl looked at him he’d run 4 miles. A bunch of the young guys in Camp Crook knew he had all this money to spend from being in the service so they talked him into buying a car. Gilbert couldn’t drive it, so they took his car all over the country. Sometimes they took Gilbert with them and sometimes they didn’t. Finally I decided I’d better teach Gilbert to drive so we took the car down on the sage brush flat and taught him how to drive. He didn’t like to shift. I’ll never forget when he came to the big creek--he’d gun it and down he’d go and just swoop right out through the dust like a big bird on the other side. He didn’t want to have to shift so he’d get up enough speed going down so he could make it up the other side without shifting!”

In the spring of 1930 Frank and Pearl moved to the Allinson place just east of Bowman. In later years Frank bought the place from him.

Five children were born to Frank and Pearl. They are as follows:

Twins—Dean Clarence and Gene Curtis were born May 6, 1929 in Camp Crook at the home of Mrs. Charlie Turbiville. Frank said, “We took them home and we both had a wrestling match—we had to pack water to the house and wash clothes with a wash board. That first year was really something!”

Dean Clarence attended Bowman High School and BHSC in Spearfish, SD. He married Leona Kivimaki and they lived 15 miles southwest of Bowman for many years. They now live in Bowman and Dean is a mechanic and works on carburetors. They have 8 children: Gary married Doreen Fadness. They live on the home place southwest of Bowman. They have two children—Ali and Renae; Jerry married Candice Doe. They live in Reeder, ND and he works for Knife River Coal Co. They have 1 daughter, Melissa; Steve married Nadine Fadness. They live in Bowman. He is a small appliance repairman and also drives the school bus. They have 2 children—Abby and Thaddeus; Mick married Mary Breen. They live in Dickinson where he works for Hersruds International Harvester and she is and R.N. at the hospital. They have two boys—Marcus and Matthew; Laurie attended NDSU at Fargo and has a degree in Foods and Nutrition. She is presently living at home and works at Gambles and Bomars; Tim married Cheryl Mollman. He is a mechanic at the Carburetor Shop in Bowman. They have one daughter—Crystal; Penny attended NDSU for one year. She now works at Bennett Drug in Bowman; David is an 8^th grader.

Gene Curtis graduated Bowman High School and attended BHSC. He then attended church college in Chicago. He married Marion Empie, a minister’s daughter from Bowman. They went as missionaries to Kenya, Africa and have been there since 1954. It soon will be 30 years that they have lived there. Gene is now involved in building a 90-bed hospital in Tenwek, Kenya. They have four children: Colleen married Terry Hawk of Ohio. They live in Honduras, Central America and are missionaries. They live on a cattle ranch and teach the natives how to run stock. They have 2 children—Jeremie and Benjie; Kenneth and his wife Sherry live in Jackson, Mississippi. He is a minister. They have two boys—Dennie and Joel; Diane has a 4-year degree in nursing and is a captain in the Air Force; Dwight is a computer technician and operator living in Oklahoma City, OK.

Gail Lee was born March 12, 1933 at the farm in Bowman. Frank said he had been up night and day lambing for two weeks before Gail was born. Pearl’s folks finally found a hired man and sent him out to help Frank. Frank said, “He came about 6 PM and we worked until midnight. I told him to go upstairs and sleep. About 1 AM Pearl poked me and told me I had to go get the doctor. I was so tired I just told her to roll over and go back to sleep! Well, she wouldn’t let me so I got out of bed. Gail was going to be born in the front room so I decided if I was going to get the hired man out, I’d better do it now. He had barely got to sleep and I told him what was happening and he’d better get out of there, so he went down to the shed and slept with the sheep. I’ll bet he wondered what kind of slave driver I was!” Frank managed to get Dr. Cornelius to the house. He said the snow was so deep that it was over the fence. The doctor had to walk downhill to get into the house.

Gail attended Bowman High School and National College in Rapid City. She completed her nurse’s training at the hospital in Rapid City and became an R.N. She married Delbert “Bud” Murner of Rapid City. They live in Woodland, CA where he worked for the Fire Department and she is a registered nurse. They have three children: Linda married Joe Yingst (divorced). They had one daughter, Amanda. Linda is a bookkeeper at the hospital and has also taken nurse’s training; Mike works for Pacific Power Co. and is putting in high lines from the thermal power plants; Larry attended school in Phoenix, AZ. He has since made it his home and is an IBM technician and operator.

Sue Ann was born on Labor Day, Sept. 1, 1936 in the Bowman hospital. She died in February of 1978 of cancer.

Sue Ann graduated Bowman High School and attended Dickinson College one year and got a teaching certificate. She taught Cottage School north of Bowman. Before the school year was out she married a local rancher Don Burke. They lived 15 miles north of Bowman. They had seven children: Tom married Twyla Frietag. He ranches on the place with his dad. They have 4 boys—Don, Matthew, Mike & John; Wanda is married to Ron McKitrick. They live 7 miles southeast of Bowman. They have 3 children—Amy Sue, Garrett and Joseph; Bruce married Tammy Teske. They live in Bowman and own Twin Butte Liquor. They have one son—Ryan Michael; Donna married Craig Speidel. They live in Bismarck where he works for Montana-Dakota Utilities. They have one son—Nicholas; Mark married Kitty Theuer. They live in Bismarck where he is an insurance agent for American Family. They have 2 children—Sue and Adam; Patrick is in his 3^rd year at SDSM&T but should graduate this spring. He is presently doing some of his college work for a company in Cedar Rapids, IA; Ruth is a 7^th grader.

Linda Jo was born July 12, 1939. She graduated Bowman High School, attended college at Grand Forks and Fargo, and then finished in Ames, IA with a degree in Home Economics. She married Jay Olpin and they live in Frederick, MD. He is a scientist and has been involved in cancer research for 20 years. Linda helps him with various scientific projects. They have 3 children: Rebecca is a sophomore at Brigham Young Univ. in Provo, UT; Ruth is in high school; Tim is in grade school.

Pearl and Frank always raised a large garden. Frank said that Pearl would can anything that would go into a jar. Frank also planted and raised apricots, crab apples, apples and pears. When I was there on Friday we had apricot sauce that was made from the apricots on the place.

Pearl and Frank enjoyed traveling. Frank said, “We traveled all over the U.S. by car, train and plane. We went to Chicago once or twice a year to see Gene when he was going to college. We have been to Mexico, and to California, several times. We drove to New York City to see Gene when he came home from Africa. We flew to Washington, D.C. several times to see Linda and her family. We’ve been to Missouri to see all the Ridgeway relatives. The only place we haven’t been is in the real southern states and the far northeastern states.”

In 1977 Maxine Paulson started coming to the farm to help Pearl. She has been coming off and on three times a week since. She was there the day I interviewed Frank and made us a good noon meal.

Pearl died September 4, 1983 after suffering a series of strokes. She had been hospitalized many times the last three years of her life.

Frank manages to keep himself busy on the farm. He enjoys working outside and keeps himself busy.

Frank Lewton is a very nice man. I’ve certainly enjoyed visiting with him and I’m sure you would, too.