My Memoir
Part 19-L:
Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer —
More Perils of Polygamy
Two of Bill’s Mormon French-missionary friends,
LDS “Saints” “Dick ‘n’ Peter”
“By their friends, ye shall know them.”
Biblical Adidge
Taking up where we left off in “My Memoir: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And More Perils of Polygamy, Part 19-K”:
I said in an earlier blog that my being married into Bill’s “family” (or “love nest”?) was out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire: I thought I was escaping my hellish home life with my family of origin for a heavenly love life with the man I was deeply in love with, idolized, and adored. It turned out to be the opposite.
I didn’t know it then; know it now: My new family was adamant I didn’t visit my family — especially my parents — because they were hiding their bisexuality, among other things! (In the LeBaron cult in the 1960s, homosexuality was a sin punishable by the death penalty … for starters.)
I sure didn’t know it during the years I was married to Bill, but I realized years later (as I became older, wiser, and more informed) the reason Bill and his other two wives were so touchy about my having any contact with my parents or family was that around a year before I was married to Bill, my older sister had gone home to visit our parents to tell them that she was just sick because, among other things, she had discovered her husband, “Saint Dick”, was fuckin’ ‘n’ suckin’ “Saint Peter.'” And stickin’ light bulbs and beer bottles up his butt … ‘n’ other such!
She was practically going nuts because she had witnessed it all for herself while peeping through a keyhole after hearing noises in the living room way past her bedtime!
More about this in my upcoming book. Suffice it to say, “Peter” had already returned to the United States with his wife by the time my uncle Ervil, et Al, heard from my parents the details my sister had witnessed.
When “Dicky’s” buddy Billy got wind of it by way of his bosom-buddy Ervil LeBaron, Billy betrayed bosom-buddy Ervil, ran to his old Mormon-Missionary pal Dicky, and cried:
“Dick, get out of this colony! QUICK!!
Get yer family ‘n’ wife —
And FLEE for your life!!
Leave your belongings behind!
DO make haste!
There’s no time to waste!!
Hit for the US border before daybreak!
Daylight will be too late!
Ervil LeBaron’s rounding up
A Mexican mob at this moment
To tar ‘n’ feather yer dick,
And hang you by yer balls!
Mexicans in this area don’t tolerate
Homosexuals AT ALL …
Not one LITTLE bit!
Oh, shit! The words out!
They’ve found you out!
So you sure-as-hell better get out!”
It makes me sick,
But GET! QUICK, Dick!”
In the Mormon French mission field in the mid to late 1950s, Peter, Dick (pseudonyms), and Bill were close friends. They had all been high-up priesthood leaders in the Mormon French Mission Field for about two years before Bill was ousted and excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he had begun preaching Mormon fundamentalism to his followers, other French missionaries, and converts.
I think these above details give you a good idea why my new family — Bill’s family — was so careful to keep from me their private love life. And why they thoroughly warned and threatened me that if I were to go home to my parents to tell ANYTHING that was going on in my marriage or Bill’s family, I’d be dumped!
Now, what’s an adolescent girl to do when she’s stumped, but not even allowed to visit her parents and siblings once she’s married into a quagmire — cast from the frying pan into the fire?
(Continued November 27, 2017: “My Memoir: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And More Perils of Polygamy — Part 19-M”)
The following is one of the many excellent informative interviews you can find on YouTube that reveals truths about the Mormon fundamentalist lifestyle I was raised in.
Here Aunt Rebecca Kimbel is interviewing her sister, my Aunt Irene Kunz LeBaron/Spencer, formerly a wife of my Uncle Verlan LeBaron, one of my mother’s seven brothers.
STEPHANY SPENCER: 