kismocles's Full Review: Sandra Day O'Connor et al - Lazy B: Growing Up on ...
Lazy B made me regret not growing up on a ranch in the Southwest. That’s how appealing I found Sandra Day O’Connor’s memoir of her childhood on the Lazy B ranch. (The name “Lazy B” comes from the brand used on the cattle, which was of a “B” lying on its side.) In telling her tale, SDO goes back in her family’s history to her great grandparents. She explains how her grandfather—by then a Midwesterner—made an investment in a cattle ranch on the Arizona/New Mexico border. Her father, who was preparing to go to college, was sent to check up on the ranch and spent the rest of his life there.
At first he was very unhappy, as Sandra knows from his letters of the time. Then he met his future wife, Ada Mae, who was from a prominent Texas family. The love letters between them are very moving. Ada Mae dropped everything to move to this ranch where she shared a modest house with her husband and the cowboys who slept on the porch.
Life on the Lazy B by most standards would be considered hard. They had no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no easy way to communicate with the outside world. Despite lack of basic comforts, one shares SDO’s assessment that there was no better place to grow up and no better way to live.
This memoir has a terrific nostalgia factor. Her memories of growing up there, her trips into town, her recollections of events, all have the appeal of a simpler life gone by. I especially liked her description of the cowboys, each colorful and memorable in his own way. They literally did become part of her family and she shares this extended family with her readers freely.
This work has the virtue of being pure memoir. There is no spin whatsoever. The work thankfully never takes the tone of “how I survived everything to become the first female Justice.” I think SDO wanted to tell this story as it was. She’ll let history judge her as a jurist. So she avoids all politics and any attempt to inflate her own ego. She does not hide the fact that her father was difficult as well as wonderful. She tells a great story of having to fix a flat tire on the pickup all by herself (she had to stand on the wrench to move the lug nuts). Instead of being proud at her self-reliance, her father is angry that lunch is late. Her brother Alan and her father conflicted mightily over ranch management. She does not judge harshly though but puts their behavior into the proper context.
The memoir contains all the emotions of life: humor, disappointment, anxiety (especially over the weather), elation, etc. The characters are presented as real people, as they really were. Her mother, for instance, had a failing memory by the time Sandra was appointed to the Supreme Court. She told Sandra that President Reagan looked familiar.
The book is jointly written with Alan Day, who remained on the ranch for decades, but is told from first person singular, where “I” = Sandra. So Alan’s adventures are told by Sandra. One memorable event in Alan’s life was when his ailing father praises him on the cattle, calling them the best ever seen on the Lazy B. That was the very day the father died, after years of conflict, Alan’s last memory of his father was a positive one.
This is an enjoyable work of memoir, bringing the reader into a West and into a lifestyle which unfortunately has passed away.
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