Heidi Redux

The colorful evolution of my mental, sexual and career development was always reflected in the selection of my automobiles. HEIDI REDUX chronicles the passage of years from childhood to menopause in a unique and stunningly forthright, sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, but always brutally honest manner. A four-year old child "bags" a Marine while hunting for sailors with her mother in downtown Santa Ana, California. The Marine and her mother marry and buy a black, 1947 Plymouth which will take this soon-to-be expanded family on an odyssey including four states and multiple attempts to forge new beginnings on little dairy farms, some without electricity or running water.

Early aspirations to become a nun and marry Jesus are abandoned as the family becomes increasingly dysfunctional and the emerging adolescent libido does battle with the requirement to remain a virgin and not end up as the mother eventually did---in a Tijuana jail for trying to rob a drunk between her sixth and seventh marriages.

Scholarships to nursing school and falling in love and marrying a world-famous neuro-psychiatrist take this young woman to grand adventures in foreign lands and finally to the pinnacle of power in Washington D.C. as the spouse of the man who was a personal friend of the President and held one of the most powerful medical positions in the world as Assistant Secretary of Defense/Health Affairs. She becomes a power in her own right at three different Federal Agencies, known as the "piss queen of the heavens" as she implemented the forensic drug testing requirements for civilian aviation at FAA, her last position before mobilization as a Navy Nurse Corp Reservist during Desert Storm.

Along the way she buys increasingly powerful and sophisticated automobiles reflecting her changing status. She also battles alcoholism and shares the shame and horror of women facing this disease, so often associated with promiscuous behavior.