In her tiny apartment where there is barely enough room for a bed, a couch and a television set, Beverly Jane Fox found a nook for a sewing machine.
A nearby hanger rack holds teeny little bathrobes designed for babies.
Sewing the robes for homeless mothers and infants is her way of helping people who are down and out, a situation she knows from having lived at the Everett Gospel Women’s Mission on and off for years.
She describes her early rough-and-tumble life in a new book, called “Life Among the Grasses.” Fox, 71, will read from her book and sign copies at 10:30 a.m. Monday at Everett Community College.
Fox, a former EvCC student, was invited to read from her book as a way of celebrating an accomplishment by one of the college’s own, said Donna Staggs, of the college’s bookstore.
“If we have somebody who succeeded in any way, shape or form, we like to get the word out,” Staggs said. “It’s good for the store and good for the student.”
Fox’s book was published by PublishAmerica, which specializes in books about or written by people who face and overcome hardships and obstacles in life, and who turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones, said Shawn Street, with PublishAmerica.
“From a bad marriage, drug and alcohol abuse and eventually jail, Ms. Fox has faced many obstacles and trying times throughout her life,” Street said. “However, when society was prepared to give up on her and throw her away, she found a strong faith that guided her away from the demons that haunted her and led her to a new, clean life.”
Fox was born in Colorado in 1936 and grew up in a mining camp in the Rocky Mountains. Her family moved to Washington when she was 16. She fell in with a crowd that led to drugs, crime and jail time, she said.
Years later, living in Marblemount in a refurbished 1949 Ford bus she named “Old Buffalo Gal,” Fox grew and sold marijuana.
She was arrested in 1995 by federal officers who hunted down her operation by helicopter. Authorities found 91/2 pounds of marijuana ready for sale in her other bus, a retired school bus she named “Old Yellow Rose.”
Old Yellow made a dandy greenhouse, she recalled.
Investigators found another 200 plants growing near her home, she said. That time, lawyers got her off with a misdemeanor, she said. She told her court-appointed attorney that, in her defense, her heavenly Father told her she could grow “medicine.”
“It’s a miracle drug,” Fox said. “I’ve seen people thrashing in pain, eat a brownie with marijuana, then sit up in relief.”
As she got older, she said, she developed breast cancer, a painful eye problem and arthritis. She said she began rationalizing her use of marijuana as a way to deal with the pain caused by health problems.
“It mellows your mind,” Fox said. “You don’t get high, you just get by.”
She started working with groups supplying marijuana to people for medicinal purposes. She doesn’t do that anymore, but still hopes that some day legislation in Olympia will permit sick people to legally use medicinal marijuana.
Fox said her life crashed in 2001 when her youngest son died in California of a ruptured liver. She drove Old Buffalo Gal to Colorado, where another of her four children lived.
She gave up dope and cigarettes over a long two weeks in 2003. She talked to God and through his help, Fox said, got off the drug.
“Even after the death of my son, I continued smoking dope and cigarettes,” she said. “I had tried many, many, many times over the years to quit, but for the wrong reasons.”
Fox said she didn’t want to get lung cancer, get busted or go to jail. She didn’t want to waste her money and didn’t want her clothes and apartment smelling like dope or tobacco.
“I finally asked for the right reason, to become obedient to Him. He immediately took all my addictions away.”
Fox said she was sure Satan was disappointed when he lost her soul.
People still ask her to grow marijuana for them to use, but Fox said she turns them down.
The sweet-looking grandmother lives a simple life, riding her three-wheeled bicycle with an ample basket to Safeway to shop for her north Everett neighbors. She’s finished writing a second book in what she sees as a three-part series about her life.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
Book signing
Beverly Jane Fox will read from her new book, “Life Among the Grasses,” and sign copies at 10:30 a.m. Monday in the Parks Building at Everett Community College, 2000 Tower St., Everett.
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