A lot of things have changed in the 30 plus years since I attended a family reunion of my mother’s side of the family two weeks ago. At an out of the way B and B in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I found myself among a group of Anderson cousins I mostly hadn’t seen since then. It was a special time, and the stories we exchanged brought back a mother load of memories along with both laughter and tears as those of us who were still around remembered those who were not.

Two of the latter—the ones who are gone–were my cousins, Margie and Polly, the daughters of my mother’s older sister Alice Johnson.  Margie passed away only a few months ago while Polly has been gone for over fifty years.

Polly and Margie were relatively close in age to my two older sisters, which made the four of them chums. I was a good four years younger than any of them, and that made me an unwelcome member of the club—the outcast, the pest. It isn’t until much later that those age gaps disappear.

When my parents were thinking about moving to Arizona, they went off on an exploratory mission, leaving my sisters and I with Alice and Earnest on their farm in northeastern South Dakota.

Polly was a tomboy and a cowgirl.  She owned a horse named Fella and was an accomplished rider. She also had a fancy cowgirl outfit, complete with a red and white cowboy hat and a pair of leather chaps, all of which she had outgrown by the time we were staying with them.  Aunt Alice pulled the chaps and hat out of storage and put them on me. I could not have been more pleased. Polly was the opposite.

Soon after I emerged from the house, dressed in Polly’s cowgirl getup, she proposed a trip to the barn where we were all expected to jump from the hay mow down into a haystack on the floor of the barn far below. We all climbed a wooden ladder up into the dusty haymow. One at a time the four older girls jumped down until only I was left. They finally shamed me into jumping, but I didn’t jump far enough. One leg on the chaps caught on a nail sticking out from a rafter. I remember danglingupside down for what seemed like forever before the leather finally gave way and I landed in a tearful heap on the pile of hay. I was not a happy camper that day, and neither was Polly.

While I was in high school, Polly came to visit us in Bisbee, and someone scheduled a trail ride to the Chiricahua National Monument which, in my heart, will always be the Wonderland of Rocks. There were eight of us or so in the group, Polly among them. It’s an eight mile trip from the dude ranch in the valley below to the viewpoint at the top of the trail. I was on a black gelding named Lightning, and Polly was on a little white mare that looked for all the world like Dale Evans’s Buttermilk.

On the trip up, I practically had to carry Lightning. He dawdled along at the very end of the pack. Once we finally made it to the top, everyone shared a great laugh about how slow Lightning was, but let me tell you, on the way down, that horse showed his true colors. By the time we made it far enough down the trail to be on relatively flat terrain, Lightning had figured out that he had a totally inexperienced rider on board, and he took off like a shot. He was aiming for a low hanging branch, expecting to scrape me off, when Polly came racing up from behind on her little mare, grabbed my reins, and pulled us over. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve been on a horse even once since then.

Two weeks ago, the family reunion ended on Sunday morning, then it was time to go into Rapid City for a library event. Since Alice and Ernest had moved to Rapid after they left the farm, my heart was still full of Polly and her family when we got to the library. Naturally, the first story I told that day was about my cousin, Polly Johnson. I believe it’s a story worth repeating here.

After Alice and Ernest moved to Rapid City, Polly’s singing ability turned her into a local media personality. She was on both radio and television. By the time she was sixteen, she was starring in her own Saturday TV program—The Hoedown. She and Margie sang duets, as they had always done, but Polly was the real star of the show, singing and accompanying herself by strumming a guitar.

When I was fifteen or so, we visited Rapid City in the wintertime. I was grownup enough by then to accompany Polly to a nighttime rehearsal. She drove us there, speeding with utter confidence over  ice and snow in her little red and white Metropolitan. Whenever I hear that song, “Beep beep, beep beep, it’s horn went beep, beep, beep.” I always think of Polly in her “little Nash Rambler.”  (How do you get that thing out of second gear?)

Several years passed uneventfully, but then Polly and her manager came to a sudden parting of the ways. During that uncertain time, she came to visit us in Arizona again and spent several days at my sister’s house, strumming on her guitar and singing one country/western ballad after another into my sister’s reel-to-reel Wollensak tape recorder: Tumbling Tumble Weeds; Cool Clear Water; Five Brothers who Left Arkansas; Ghost Riders in the Sky; Bimbombay. Decades later, my late nephew, David Lane, remastered those brittle original reel-to-reel tapes and transferred the music to cps so we could all hear Polly’s bell-clear voice once again.

Back in Rapid after that short break in Bisbee, Polly decided it was time to move on. She left Rapid City behind, moved to California, settled in Lodi, got saved, and took up with a gospel singer named Mary Jane. The two of them played to packed houses in the Sacramento/Stockton area. They also recorded a couple of albums together.

By the spring of 1964, Polly’s gospel career was on an upward swing. She had recorded a new solo album, I’ve Found the Answer, that was due out in the fall. Her interactions with young people had drawn some attention in high places.  In May of that year she was summoned to Washington, DC., to receive a Congressional award related to her work with youth.

The week before Polly was due to fly out, she spent several days writing letters to friends and family alike. In the one she sent to my sister she said, “I know I should be packing for the trip, but somehow writing these letters seems more important.”

On the morning of her flight, Polly received an advance copy of I’ve Found the Answer and took it onboard the plane with her.  That flight was one of the first-ever plane hijackings in America. A disgruntled passenger broke into the cockpit where he shot and killed both the pilot and co-pilot.  The plane plunged into a hillside, killing all on board.

Days later, a farmer working in his newly plowed field somewhere nearby came upon the record. The force of the wreck had blown the album out of both its cardboard slipcover and the paper wrapper and sent it sailing through the air.  The record itself had landed, undamaged, in the soft earth of that newly plowed field. It sat there at an angle with the title clear for all to see—I’ve Found the Answer.

Yes, Polly, I think you did find the answer.

And if any of my readers have ever wondered where the gospel singer came from in Taking the Fifth?

Now you know.