girl-let alone being one myself. My step-father didn't want to be criti- cized by the men for showing any partiality, so my brother and I were always given the dirty, mean jobs to do around the ranch—and it was a big one-almost 50,000 acres: For example, when I was thirteen, F— taught me to stack hay the way he wanted it stacked, and I spent the rest of the haying season on top of hay stacks 12 feet wide, 24 feet high and as long as the hay yards required some of them about 110 feet long. Quite a responsibility for a 13 year old boy. I also rode over eighty miles in two and a half days to another ranch just to pick up two horses that had strayed over there. I was also two and a half days back.

G-pa died suddenly that summer when I was thirteen, and G-ma moved into town shortly after that. I was to work on the ranch during the summers and live with her in the wintertimes to go to school. Living in town, I quickly made friends (with people I had known all my life) and became too busy studying and having fun to do more than think once in a while about dressing. But I did find time to secretly envy the girls with their pretty clothes and long hair.

During my Junior year of High School, we decided to put on a comedy for our Class Play. One part in the play I particularly wanted the part of the boy posing as a girl. I tried out for two parts, then privately told the director (who was also my English teacher) that I was a natural for the boy/girl part as I had been forced to wear dresses as punishment and felt comfortable in them. She laughed and told me that as I had been the only volunteer, I had the part. I thanked her and after school, rushed home, dug my dress box out of the trunk and tried on the dress. Fortunately, I hadn't grown too much and it still fit!!! My feet had grown so much, though, that I couldn't even force my feet into the shoes. I was bitterly disappointed.

The next morning, I told Miss K—, the director, that I couldn't find a pair of girl's shoes to fit me. She looked at my feet and asked me to drop by her apartment that evening. I did, and she and her roommate soon had me wobbling around in a pair of high heels. She told me to take them and practice wearing them every chance I could. Learning my lines for the play was far easier than learning to walk properly in those heels. G-ma, of course, was quite unhappy to think I couldn't get the 'male' lead in the play. I couldn't explain, either, that I was the male lead.

That play was one of the high lights of my life- -as any TV would under- stand. As a joke I suggested that just my initials appear on the program then talked the typist into putting me as

12

'Marylynn'

-". I