‘TOOTS McDOUGALD’ –Stiles

She was born Marilee McDougald, but her Uncle Ab always called her his “little Tootsie” and the name stuck. Seven decades later she was still listed as “Toots” in the Moab phone directory. Whether Time sweetened Toots’ memories or she just loved Life that much, only she can say for sure. But at 80, she could find little fault with her childhood.

“It was wonderful. We went on hikes and picnics and chicken fries. We had great watermelon busts; in fact, a man named Ollie Reardon planted a field of watermelons, just for us kids to steal. He said we could steal from that patch all we wanted, if we left his other patch alone…Everything was so free and easy. No pressures. No traffic. We didn’t know anything about drugs. We thought we were pretty wild if we got a sip of homemade beer. My father’s friend was a bootleg­ger…I’d tell you who it is, but they’ve still got family here.”

Hardly anyone in Moab owned a new car in 1940. The Depression made sure of that. Old cars and trucks limped along, held together with baling wire (Duct tape had not been invented) and horses still provided conveyance for many. Toots depended on her feet to get her just about anywhere her heart desired. Hummers and SUVs and ATVs and ORVs and even Jeep 4WDS were beyond the realm of Toots’ imagination.

Toots McDougald’s summer nights were unfettered by credit card debt and staggering mortgage payments or time-share condo schemes. Or late night indiges­tion from a Big Mac, or a Whopper, or a Soft Taco Supreme, or a Lean Cusine frozen dinner. Her evenings were spent with Dick, watching the twilight fall over their little town, listening to the croaking and humming of frogs in Mill Creek or the rustle of a summer breeze through the towering branches of a cottonwood tree and believing that it would be this way forever. Her life was a quiet adventure in the best sense of the word and the experience didn’t cost her a penny extra. She was blissfully ignorant of a future she would live to see and it would all happen within the span of her remarkable life.