What Brought Me to Alaska (and PH!)
This is an update of earlier version of this story that appeared in ECHO Magazine, March 15, 2018
This writer is the one with the obvious attitude.
The notion of “family” was foreign to me as a child.
Not until I took an Anchorage Community College class in Sociology did I understand that family is the building block of society. I remember being struck by that notion when I first heard it.
The circumstance of my childhood determined my understanding of family as: Some people got it and some people don’t.
Today, after two years in Philippines–following 60 consecutive winters in Alaska–I marvel at the culture of family bonds so prevalent here after having suffered criminal acts against me, by evil people who exploit the illusion of family, to scam innocent victims. Alaskans are unprotected by corrupt Alaska Courts with judges mostly trying to make it to retirement and go home.
[1} Because God is so Good; Life Gets Better, DONN LISTON October 26, 2024
The American Experience of Poor People
As a boy in Albuquerque, New Mexico I was raised primarily by babysitters while both parents worked. I had big blue eyes and a contagious smile. Some of these caregivers came from the Bernalillo County Correctional Center. I learned things I didn’t need to know at the age of 8-10 years old. For instance, I helped one of them tattoo the words “beer” over one breast and “wine” over the other. I still remember her name; Eloise.
She left an impression on me, too.
My grandmother, Alta Tichnor was principal at the Bernalillo Elementary School and provided plenty of athletic supplies and books for my use. My friends and I would place bases in a diamond around the Mescalero Road blacktop off Route 66 where my family lived in an adobe mud home. In the street in front of that home we took turns pitching, and batting, and shagging the ball when it was hit. We would throw the ball at the runner to get him out. I didn’t wear anything but a pair of shorts and tennis shoes beneath that hot New Mexican sun.
[2] Bernalillo Elementary School
On one occasion one of the kid’s dad showed up and took the bat. He began to direct us to all get ready to go chase the ball for him! I marched up to him and assertively took MY bat back. In no uncertain terms I told him we were playing this game OUR way. The manner in which I held that bat showed him I meant what I was saying. He took his son and left.
I Didn’t Take Adult Authority Too Seriously
On another occasion I hit the ball through the picture window of the house. Before my parents arrived I popped some popcorn and went around the neighborhood selling it by the bag. By the time they came home I had a good start on my disaster fund.
I have always had a strong moral compass and dedication to doing what is right. This entrepreneurial spirit later served me well in All American City Anchorage, AK.
[3] Unsupervised Youth in Anchorage AK (1960s), DONN LISTON, September 14, 2017
My paternal grandfather, Ray Liston was born in a sharecropper cabin in Oklahoma. When he got my grandmother pregnant out of wedlock, her family–including some strapping farm boys–persuaded him to do the right thing and marry my grandmother before my dad was born. That’s how my Old South family worked back then.
Grandpa seemed to be a bitter man, of slight build with a round bald head, and always wearing a hat. He lived for baseball, worked as a carpenter, and had lost the end of one of his fingers in a joiner. Grandpa rolled his cigarettes with that hand, using that shortened finger as if it had been especially cut for that purpose. I never got the feeling he liked me much, but I don’t really think he liked anybody much. He was like a cur dog that hung around the yard but didn’t want much to do with anybody.
My father had been born October 31, 1929—the week the stock market crash sparked The Great Depression. His unskilled parents could hardly feed themselves, so my father was passed around among family and friends through most of the years leading to his graduation from high school in Clovis, NM.
This is similar to the extended families I have observed in Philippines over two years.
[4] Great Living Two Years in Philippines, DONN LISTON December 7, 2024
The Great Depression influenced everything my father did in his life until he died in 2014. I fear we have a few generations who have no idea what this kind of economic turmoil can do to the spirit of a country. He was part of the generation following the The Greatest Generation that fought and won World War II.
[5] Confessions of an Alaska Boomer, DONN LISTON April 25, 2024
One uncle I heard about who cared for my father was Woody Witt. He died at age 106 and was a featured attraction at many local parades in his Oklahoma town.
I guess this was a kind of family, but these people simply did what they had to do–not necessarily what they wanted to do–to survive.
These paternal grandparents, with my father and his sister, could have played the “Joads” in the movie version of John Steinbeck’s book The Grapes of Wrath. They were simple people driven off the land by the great dustbowl, and they escaped with everything they owned–to make it as far as New Mexico.
My mother’s story is similar; her father contracted tuberculosis and was isolated in a hospital for that disease. I never met him. Her mother, Alta Ticknor, was a school teacher who took her two daughters west. In New Mexico she was offered a job in an “Indian School” in Gallup, NM, but continued to California anyway. When Grandma couldn’t find better employment opportunity, they returned to New Mexico. She had a long career in education in New Mexico and later in California.
Alta is reported to have helped establish the first Special Education program for the City of San Diego, CA.
Life for poor people, during this time in our history, was a thread pulled until something was found on the other end or it broke, leaving nothing. Families tended to be large to manage the farm, and everyone followed a certain code of mutual support through hell or high water.
When I was born in the early 1950s, my father was following a family tradition of taking whatever work he could find and making every penny count. But my parents were married too young and by the time they had three babies to care for their marriage was over. Having children was one thing, supporting them in an unfamiliar social contract was quite another.
Added to this painful dynamic, was my father’s insecurities and self-loathing as a laborer going nowhere. Soon alcohol provided the propellant for an explosion. One drunken night included an assault of my mother and resulted in separation and ultimately divorce.
Whatever “family” might have been suggested by this short-lived marriage and propagation of children was thereby shattered forever. Further, this experience instilled in me revulsion of ANY domestic violence.
My mother was not equipped to raise three children and work to support a household financially. She tried, but the task was impossible as her angry ex-husband monitored her every move and made sure “his” son was confused about adult problems beyond a child’s experience or understanding. As that eldest son, I called Dad after one week when Mom had disappeared with a man she had been seeing. They had moved on to California–the Mecca of displaced dust bowl misfits.
Dad worked as a “telephone man” installing rotary dial instruments on which people dialed up and talked to each other. He paid child support, had a nice bachelor pad, and a 1958 MGA sports car. It had only two seats.
Upon picking us up–me, my sister and my brother–Dad gained temporary custody in the absence of our mother and took us to his efficiency apartment. We also piled into that car a basset hound and a cat among the few belongings we could take away from our now deserted Mescalero Road Albuquerque home.
Were We Now a Family?
Dad’s attorney said “NO!” I was part of the conversation when that attorney said our mother would soon be notifying Dad of her address in California to which she expected the children she had legal custody of to be sent. I didn’t want to go to a strange place subject to expectations of a new step-father, and like a lot of desperate people I have known since, Alaska was far enough away to escape the bureaucracy certain to entangle families in melodrama crisis.
Many years later Dad revealed to me that he had physically assaulted this other man my mother was now with, and threatened to kill him, before they disappeared. With that in mind, could our mother have had ample cause to desert us to find happiness away from all the pain she had endured in New Mexico? Would she have tried to get us back legally had our father not succeeded in gaining employment and moving us to Alaska?
I don’t think so. She and the other man had a daughter in 1964, who I didn’t meet until 1991.
I never saw or heard from our mother, with very limited exceptions, until I looked her up and called her myself. I wasn’t angry anymore but my new wife, Cathy, encouraged resolution of this void in my heart. As a result–on my 40th birthday–my mother and the half-sister I had never known visited us in Juneau! It was an awkward but wonderful reunion. My new sister and I were strangers with a link to the past.
Same bloodlines different life experiences.
Is family any association of people that certain parties want to aggregate and call family? In Philippines divorce and abortion are both illegal and I believe the relationship between people here is much more interlocked. You see this in the way traffic runs with so many vehicles and minimum traffic lights or signs.
Vehicle accidents are very rare.
In USA some families are small, some are large. Some are extended beyond the place in which most members reside. Is that it? The Roe v. Wade Culture of death has made inconvenient births expendable.
[6] Courage AGAINST the Death Cult! DONN LISTON June 3, 2023
I have learned through the wonder of Facebook, from a fellow Liston–whom I would likely have never known because he lives in Texas–that the Liston family can be traced back to about 1021, with the birth of Negel de Listona, a Norman Knight. Reportedly Negel was with William The Conqueror in 1066 during the Norman invasion of England. Negel died in 1086 having already changed the spelling of his name to Nigel de Liston. Thus, he is credited with being the first Liston in history and father to all living Liston’s today according to Jeff M. De Liston. The Liston’s De Liston FaceBook page even lists a Liston prayer (in Latin and English) believed to have been issued around 1023.
[7] Facebook page of Jeffrey De Liston
Listons from all over the world are friends on this digital gathering place. I have learned three brothers went to Philippines and made many babies! Through this digital network I have learned a lot about the dimension of my extended Liston family as one of many building blocks in the family of humans on planet earth.
I had already learned the hard way that family is something to cherish and celebrate.
References:
[1] Because God is so Good; Life Gets Better, DONN LISTON October 26, 2024
https://listondonn.ph/because-god-is-so-good-life-gets-better/
[2] Bernalillo Elementary School today
https://www.bernalillo-schools.org/o/bes
[3] Unsupervised Youth in Anchorage AK (1960s), DONN LISTON, September 14, 2017
https://listondonn.ph/unsupervised-youth-in-anchorage-ak-1960s/
[4] Great Living Two Years in Philippines, DONN LISTON December 7, 2024
https://listondonn.ph/great-living-two-years-in-philippines/
[5]Confessions of an Alaska Boomer, DONN LISTON April 25, 2024
https://listondonn.ph/confessions-of-an-alaska-boomer-2/
[6] Courage AGAINST the Death Cult! DONN LISTON 06/03/2023
https://donnliston.net/2023/06/courage-against-the-death-cult/
[7] Facebook page of Jeffrey De Liston
https://www.facebook.com/jeff.m.liston
Lo, There do I see my Father. Lo, There do I see my Mother, my sisters and my brothers. Lo, Do I see the line of my people, back to the beginnings. Lo, they do call to me, they bid me to take my place among them, in the Halls of Vallhala, where the brave may Live, Forever
A Liston’s Payer, 900AD.
John De Liston was a Knights Templar in the late 1190s he returned from the Holy land to Scotland to a place Called Over New Liston where he built his church. He named it Temple Liston a town grew up around the church and was called the town The village of Temple Liston until the 1300s when the Pope outlawed the Knights Templars. The town changed its name to Kirkliston, Scotland John’s De Liston’s church is still there to this day and is still called Temple Liston.
I Jeffrey De Liston am a direct Descendent of John De Liston I put the De back into my name to honor my ancestors. If you’re Liston family came from Scotland or Ireland you are also descended from John De Liston this goes for almost all the Listons who are in America today Canada, Australia and the Philippines. Oh one more thing if your Liston family is from England you are descended from John’s brother Simon De Liston so you see we Liston’s are all part of the same Liston family.
I give honor to my Ancestor John De Liston
Inside all the armour is a man ready to fight for HIS FAITH IN CHRIST knowing that no matter the outcome of his struggles CHRIST will judge him on judgement day and the RESERECTION of all the dead, those who died FOR CHRIST and in CHRISTS service will hear the words
” I know you “
Who Were the Knights Templar?
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/the-knights-templar
The Knights Templar was a large organization of devout Christians during the medieval era who carried out an important mission: to protect European travelers visiting sites in the Holy Land while also carrying out military operations. A wealthy, powerful and mysterious order that has fascinated historians and the public for centuries, tales of the Knights Templar, their financial acumen, their military prowess and their work on behalf of Christianity during the Crusades still circulate throughout modern culture.
