Category: The Applegate Trail

by Susie Applegate I’ve just finished the story about the Budreau fire. It’s seven a.m. and I’ve been up since 3 ‘clock this morning, when Renee, the sheriff’s dispatcher, called me to tell me that the Old Arlington house was burning. I keep thinking about what Shaherazade said and the way the little ones just moved in close to their parents and had that look in their eyes like you see in the eyes of the depression photographs. A look of pain and resignation that should never be present in a child of eight like Shaherazade’s sister Salome, much less in Juliette who isn’t even two years old “I spent my whole life going from one disaster to another.” At least Shaherazade didn’t sound defeated when she said that. She sounded angry and I have to say, good for her.     Hugo Budreau kept talking about how thankful the…

Okay, ten weeks holed up in my apartment is over the top, even for a recluse like me. I was so pissed at my dad and mom for perpetuating this falsehood about the Arlingtons that I could hardly stand it! I don’t care if The Germaine Truth goes to hell if, in the end, it’s just a baby version of the California rag I left behind. For crying out loud, I will not sign some faustian contract with Satan for $500 a month and Mom’s tuna casserole. A girl’s got to have standards.  I just don’t get it. All my life I have been taught about journalistic integrity. It has been the foundation of my family culture. So what went wrong? I can understand The Washington Post or The Los Angeles Times, or any of the big corporate media swimming in millions of dollars of investors money. I can fathom…