Sutterwriters

Five Friends Grow Up in an Oil Town
Taft Writers:
Margaret Woollen Johnson, Betty Hast Simon,
Carol McGill Mackechnie, Shirley Porter Aney,
and Audrey Coker Robinson
Cover Photo by Al Woollen, Taft, California, 1939
Book design & cover by Lawrence (Chip) Spann
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Foreword:

There is never any subsititute for friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. These are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
         ~Alexander McCall Smith

We five friends grew up together in a small town in the 1930s and 1940s agree with these wise words. After high school, we had all moved on but kept in touch. In 1984, after more than thirty years of mostly holiday card contacts, Audrey invited the four of us to gather at her Merced home. Shirely, Margaret, Carol, and Betty said "yes" with absolutely no hesitation. Calls were made, dates were set, and the "Taft Five" were on the march. Arriving from scattered parts of California, we came to the Robinson Ranch, were immediately made at ease, and never stopped talking and laughing for three days. Since that first reunion, we have continued to meet at least yearly. When we are together, we are at home. We are free to speak about all things. We laugh. We have a great time. Writing this memoir together has brought us even closer as we search memories from long ago. Reflecting on shared history and expressing our sense of ourselves in writing has enhanced our respect and admiration for one another.

Why are the "hoops of steel" so strong? These friendships reach back to before we had husbands and jobs and children and grandchildren, before life's choices and accidents moved our lives in unanticipated directions. It is reassuring to learn that, although we have been challenged and changed by our life experiences, our earlier selves still exist and are recognized.

Life-long acquaintance helps us to be at ease and unquarded, without masks and pretenses. Some of us have been friends for nearly seventy years and falseness is out of the question; we know each other too well.

Along with sharing memories of the unique Taft environment, we knew the most significant people of each other's early lives. We remember each other's mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. All of our parents had been married for decades, and as children, we did not doublt that they were a solid and unshakeable unit. Supplementing our own parents, the parents of our friends were additiional models to us of how to be adults. When we five women are together, our shared memories offer a subtle link to our now-absent parents.
         ~Margaret Johnson & Carol Mackechnie

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.
         ~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet