John Wayne: The Life and Legend Read Online Free PDF Page A

unlike his memories of Clyde Morrison: “My father was the kindest, most patient man I ever knew.” Further complicating his life was his name. Children made fun of him, asked him why he had a girl’s name and why his mother didn’t dress him in skirts. Not surprisingly, in later years he didn’t particularly like to talk about his childhood; his last wife said that the stories came out only in fragments during their twenty years together. Mainly, he felt unloved by his mother and was quietly distressed by his father’s ineffectuality.
    In 1914 the Morrison family moved to Palmdale, on the edge of the Mojave desert. Clyde’s father had spent $3,000 for eighty acres, and according to the homestead rules then in effect, if they could develop the property they could leverage their eighty acres into the surrounding 560 acres. Within the family, it would be claimed that Clyde had developed tuberculosis and needed a dry climate.
    He sure got one.
    Clyde Morrison took over a farmhouse, “a glorified shack,” according to his son. There was no gas, electricity, or running water. Nearby was a small barn, twelve feet by sixteen feet. When they were finished unpacking, they looked around and saw . . . nothing. Wayne remembered it as “barren, deserted country. . . . Palmdale was in the middle of nowhere.” In addition, Clyde Morrison didn’t know anything about farming. Other than that, it was a great move.
    That same year, young Morrison saw the first newspaper headline to make an impression: “WAR DECLARED.” The nearest town was Lancaster, eight miles away, which had been settled by Mexican railroad workers. Lancaster got electricity the same year the Morrisons moved to Palmdale, a town with two paved streets, five saloons, two hotels, two banks, and a dry goods store. There was also a two-hundred-foot watering trough for the horses and an annual rabbit hunt. All it lacked was Frederic Remington to paint it. Molly Morrison was appalled, and when Molly Morrison was appalled, somebody was going to suffer.
    Marion began attending the Lancaster Grammar School, eight long miles from Palmdale, riding a horse named Jenny back and forth every day. Twice a week, he would stop at the general store to pick up groceries. One time the general store had a good buy on several cases of tunafish, which provided a dietary staple for the Morrisons for months on end. In later years, he would always try to avoid tunafish.
    Sometimes he’d pretend there were outlaws lurking on the deserted country roads, but there weren’t any outlaws and barely anybody else. “All I ran across were a few scrubby palms, some mesquite, a pack of jack rabbits and a few lazy rattlesnakes.”
    Once, the boy let a younger friend ride Jenny the full length of the town, which he remembered was about the distance between two telephone poles. The friend fell off the horse. “[She] was no thoroughbred, but I couldn’t have loved [her] more if she had been. I was really crazy about that horse!”
    Unfortunately, Jenny had a congenital stomach ailment that caused emaciation. Jenny was young Morrison’s responsibility as well as his transportation to and from school. Some nosy women decided that the horse was being abused, and reported the family to the local Humane Society. Marion stoutly insisted he was always feeding his horse, that he carried oats for the horse even on their daily commute to and from school.
    His teacher and his parents stood up for him. The county vet examined the horse and diagnosed the wasting disease, but a sense of outrage over being falsely accused never left him. “I learned you can’t always judge a person or a situation by the way it appears on the surface,” he remembered. “You have to look deeply into things before you’re in a position to make a proper decision.” Jenny never got healthier and eventually had to be put down.
    Clyde Morrison tried planting corn and wheat, because they were more valuable crops than hay or