Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

When Emma Dominy, writhing and shrieking, finally evicted her son Floyd, the doctors dumped him on a scale and whistled. Floyd Elgin Dominy, ten pounds, four ounces, at birth. Floyd Elgin Dominy, larger than life. All of Floyd’s siblings were born huge. His brother Ralph weighed twelve pounds. Emma’s six giant babies were a cross she was to bear through the rest of her life. Her uterus became distended, causing her horrid pain. She developed a nervous condition. Her temper became explosive, her outbursts hysterical. Strong-willed, French-Irish, and beautiful, Emma May Dominy was a handful anyway. Charles Dominy and his wife fought day and night. They had what is referred to as a “difficult” marriage, cemented precariously by children, religion, and a pious wheatbelt condemnation of divorce. Life, remembers Floyd, was like living on an earthquake fault. There was never any peace. “They fussed and fumed from morning to night. We’d lie awake at night and listen to them tearing into each other.” He is seventy when he says this, but his childhood is still a bad memory; you can read it in the turned-down corners of his mouth. “I remember what a relief it was to get away from home. It bugged me right through college. When everyone else was having nightmares about missing exams, I was having nightmares that my parents were murdering each other.”