CALIFORNIA DEAN in Jack and Jill Magazine

[Quinn Cousins]

Back in the summer of 1959, when I was just shy of eight years old, I read a multipart story in Jack and Jill Magazine. I think it was called something like "Robbery at Bootblack Hill" but I don't remember the exact title. Anyway, it was set in the Old West back in the late 19th Century, and the heroine was a schoolgirl (probably about eleven or maybe twelve years old) named CALIFORNIA DEAN, who was nicknamed CALLIE or CAL and was quite a tomboy.

She was one of the two oldest children in the one-room school and the only other child her age was a boy who "didn't like girls" and picked on her. On the last day of school before summer vacation, the boy was sitting in the desk behind Callie and took one of her pigtails and dipped it into an inkwell so that it splattered ink all over the back of her favorite dress. When she realized what had happened, she turned around and slapped him in the face.

Everyone in the schoolroom was shocked, and the teacher (a man) called Callie to the front of the room. He asked her for an explanation of her conduct, but Callie wasn't the kind of girl to rat on anyone, even on this boy, so she didn't give her teacher any excuses.

The teacher then told Callie to hold out her hand and he smacked it with the ruler several times. Callie took her punishment, and I remember these words from the story, "without flinching until her hand blistered with pain."

For some reason I took California Dean as my role-model (though I wouldn't have used a big word like that back then ), thinking her so very heroic. I was never punished physically by my parents, but when they died two years later I was sent to a Catholic boarding school just as I was turning ten years old, and I was in boarding schools through high school.

Some of the nuns were quite loving, but others were very strict, and of course there was some student-on-student bullying as in any boarding school. I think it may have been for survival that I made California Dean my role-model and never "told on" another girl, which got me respect from my classmates. And I remembered the words of the story -- "without flinching until her hand blistered with pain" -- which made it easier for me to take my own punishments.

Thinking of myself in the role of CALIFORNIA DEAN during my own punishments may be what caused my interest in fantasy to develop to what it is today.