Trying to imagine what
to tell my grandchildren and great grandchildren about my family and then
wondering how much my own children actually know or remember. I have
always told them stories, each new topic reminds me of a story, which I am
anxious to share, yet as my mind ages, small pieces of those memories begin to
fade.
My earliest memory goes
back to age 4 in Mesa Arizona but that is where my brothers Frankie and Victor
were born. I was born in Broken Arrow, Tulsa County, Oklahoma on
9/8/1953 where my parents resided in a silver gulfstream type mobile home they
could attach to the old black Hudson automobile and thus, we moved around a lot
with our parakeet and a shaggy little dog named Patsy.
My parents married
on 9/1/1951 in Montgomery Alabama where my mother was born and
raised. She had a brief marriage to Donald Robinson before meeting my Dad,
who had been in the Korean War as a copilot of a plane dropping bombs but he got
shot and ended up in Maxwell AFB in Montgomery. Dad was born 5/7/1927 in
Chetopa, Labette County, Kansas and after getting marriage, was quite anxious to
take his bride back to meet his family. He often called my mom his little
5'2" indian squaw.
Anxious to start a
family, but Mom had lost two baby boys and possibly a third miscarriage before
having me, She had to take a DES hormonal drug to carry me full term. She
also took the drug with her following pregnancies until the drug was banned from
the market, but that is another story.
So along with residing
in Oklahoma, we lived a few months in Kansas and also in Mena, Polk County,
Arkansas, before Dad wanted to follow his sister, Eunice Cochran Haraughty and
her family to Arizona. Other relatives followed, looking for work.
Dad said that his father mixed coffee and sugar in my bottle of milk. Dad
needed that special visit with his father, since his mom died in 1949 and his
father remarried right away, there had been some hard feelings between them all,
but it was finally resolved.
Mom washed clothes in
an old washtub and hung them out on the line and we always had a garden and
flowerbeds. When things got better we had a wringer washer and of course,
air conditioning.
Dad drove a tractor
with a round disc on the back helping to clear the land and also worked at the
dairy, but told stories of picking cotton to have money to feed his
family.
I found a pay stub
where he earned $70.00 for 70 hours worked at a grocery market, and a receipt
for $9.00 he paid to Children's Hospital in Tulsa where I was born, plus many
cards and letters, which included invitations to baby showers for our
cousins.
My first brother was
named Frankie Jr. but then Eunice had also named her son Frankie, who was a few
years older than me. My daddy was Frankie and his father was
Frank.
My second brother was
named Victor Daniel, after nobody that I can think of, but mom liked an actor
Victor Mature or such.
Along with living
around my dad's family, my mother's brothers visited often and worked odd jobs
until they left again. Uncle Billy taught me to swim in theVerde River and
we all visited different popular places in the state of Arizona and took many
pictures, and I can remember driving through "lighted" tunnels and around
mountains where I could see tree tops outside my window. We also drove
often by a canal and my Uncle Billy would tie a rope to the back bumper of our
car and "waterski" as we drove along.
By 1959 Mom was
homesick and a letter came about her Uncle Emmett Fenn dying and leaving her a
small gift, so we loaded up and moved to Montgmery where I began first grade at
Chisholm School.
Mom's Aunt Mary Ruth
McClain Curlee had a nice husband, Walter B., who put my Dad to work at Bear
Lumber and Construction Company, where they roofed houses and built houses and
soon built commercial as well and then my Dad was hired by Halstead Construction
where he remained as a Superintendent for 30 years. He built the
Shriners Temple, George Wallace Community College and some of the state
buildings located downtown.
We lived in a tiny two
story house on Traction Avenue, which ran into Vandiver where I walked to school
in 1960 but we moved again when Mom got pregnant with my little sister. It
was a bigger house on Maplewood Drive and had a little church that I enjoyed,
just down the street. Aunt Mary Ruth and Aunt Katie also lived on the same
street. We had a big garden, a chicken coop full of hens who often laid their
eggs under azalea bushes, a hog, and a new dog we got from Mr.Humphrey down the
street; he raised chihuahuas so little Dinky was the first of many to
come.
There was a great flood
that year but we were safely uphill from danger and Dad would drive us a little
ways to watch people going down the Lower Wetumpka Road in boats.
In our yard was a well
with a cement cover, beside a pump house. Junior and I could climb up and
then jump down off the pump house which made our feet sting with pain but we
felt like giants for a moment and would tease Victor because he was too little
to climb.
I rode the bus to
school and one day Mom went into labor with Pam and knowing Daddy needed to
finish his day at work, she called Aunt Mary for a ride to the doctor, but Mary
told her that she was too busy with her laundry to help. That began years
of hard feelings.
Mom had to pay $.25 to
ride a taxi to visit her doctor and learned that she was not quite
ready. She had a difficult time delivering this one and wrote a
letter to my Dad, which Pam still has, just in case...
Dad had carried the
letter in his wallet till he died.
That home had many
memories of our childhood, with families visiting, big dinners that included
some of our home grown chickens and vegetables and of course Dad slaughtered the
hog and fed many.
My next school year was
in another home we rented on Broadview Street near a railroad track but we
didn't stay long because it was a six block walk to school and that winter was
bitter cold and snowy. I also had an emergency appendectomy that summer so
I was not much help at all when we rented a house on Park Avenue.
Mom's brother Cecil
brought his wife Christine and son Cecil Mark Carter to visit from North
Carolina. Little Mark got hit on his forehead by the swing, or a bolt
underneath the swing and had to go to the ER for stitches.
At night the adults
played dominos and or monopoly while we kids tried to stay awake late enough to
watch Alfred Hitchcock's Shock Theatre on tv and our favorite actors were
Vincent Price, Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff. If the adults went dancing at
the Spur, our granny Lorena would come stay with us and put a quilt on the floor
so we could all lay down and watch the movie. Sometimes Aunt Katie or Aunt
Lily would come too.
Aunt Lily helped my
mother quite often with the ironing or house keeping because mom was sick a lot
after having Pam.
I think Mom was 29 when
she had to get a hysterectomy and cried often afterwards.
We met many new friends
on Park Avenue and the following summer we were out back on the swingset playing
in the rain where I fell and broke my arm. Our neighbors on Park Avenue
were Ann and Dave Royal, Catherine and Donny Foster, Kris and David Kaiser, and
they all enjoyed coffee on the porch with my parents or having a big fish
fry. Sometimes we would all meet at Wind Creek for a swim or at Line Creek
which was a beautiful historical place.
That is when Daddy
finally bought us a nice home on Kiwanis Street, only a few houses away from our
school, where I began the fifth grade. Having a cast on my arm got a lot of
attention ...
One day out in the back
yard with Uncle Billy we could see a huge cloud of smoke from Park Avenue
and he raced over there to find Catherine Foster dead as he pulled her from the
house of fire. She had gone to sleep while smoking a cigarette and her
chair caught fire; it was a very sad time for all of us. Her mother
Verna Daily found a new home on Chisholm Street for her and Donny and we visited
often since it was behind the bank.
My best friend was our
next door neighbor, Brenda Nell Jackson and her mother was full blood
indian. One day they all loaded up and moved to Miami Florida but we had
enjoyed many years of fun and friendship.
Our home on Kiwanis has
asbestos siding and Dad said we should never touch it and never try to paint
it. The roof has two or three layers but it is still the roof my daddy put
on it. After mom died he put our four names on the deed and took his off
and now Pam lives in the house. It just looks so much smaller
now.
In the beginning there
were six tall pecan trees there and a large plum tree and a fig tree out
back. We would gather up all we could and sold the nuts down the street at
a little store, while mom made jams and jellies with the fruit.
I can remember her
cooking frog legs once and they do jump out of the skillet ! I had been
frog gigging one night with Dad and Uncle Billy but not really sure
where.
One time Dad got me up
at 3 am to go fishing in Lowdes County at a little pond that had small row boats
we could use. Mom had packed his lunch box with fried egg sandwiches and I
would throw crumbs out to the turtles in the pond and Daddy said I was scaring
his fish away, but it was a good time. As my brothers grew bigger it was
their turn to go fishing with Dad and I helped Mom with Pam. When Junior
was twelve years old they came back home from fishing and Dad had drank a few
beers and let Junior drive the car home; Mom laughed and hollered at their
"good time".
My Dad was amazing and
very intelligent. He was a math genius and the guys at work were amazed
how he could calculate materials so quickly on the job. He could order
cement for a foundation without ever touching a pencil.
He could steal honey
from a beehive and never get stung and one night came in with a five gallon
bucket of maple syrup and mom cooked taffy.
As cousins married and
had more babies, our family grew and grew. Cousin Ethel Coley
Frith would visit with her four kids and we hated to see them leave.
Actually she was almost a cousin but our Aunt Katie was her
stepmother.
Aunt Lily's boys had
their families over often - James Duncan had seven children and they traveled
from San Antonio while Bobby Duncan had one son named Joey.
Mary Ruth's daughter
Linda Carol Maddox had two boys, one became a teacher at Millbrook Middle
/ Junior High School.
I dated several before
meeting my husband Charlie. I had been dating his friend, Lucky Dismukes
who didn't get too lucky with me.......but my best friend Linda McClanahan had
gone out with us on a double date but Charlie liked me better.
There was a concert
with the Four Seasons at the coliseum that Linda and I attended and Charlie
offered us a ride home. He took her home first and then asked me out again
and again and we were together from then on.
We graduated in 1971
and married in 1972. Our first child was born in 1980 after I had gone
through many sad doctor visits and tests that moms DES treatment may have
affected.
Polycystic ovaries seem
to go on to the next generation as well, along with many other female
problems.
I had a lump removed
from my breast that was benign yet many more have returned.
I know that Mom had
many health issues but I never remember her using the term, cancer. Dad
had skin cancers removed from his face and arm, and using some topical
chemotherapy or radiation creme on his arm later. His brother died of
melanoma on his neck. His sister died of kidney cancer and his mother had
abdominal cancer. I have skin cancers on my face, arm and leg but dread to
think of the treatment at this time.
I can remember Grandma
Lorena putting iodine on hers. She had orange dots on her face from
it. She was a remarkable woman but sadly my children never got to meet her
and know her love. As a kid I would sit with her at the quilting frame and
help add stitches in a pretty shell pattern. I still have three of the
quilts we made. She also kept a churn in the kitchen where we
would take turns making butter. Grandma cooked pork or chicken, never beef
or fish and she always had a plate of leftover biscuits on her table which were
so tasty when she added syrup.
So many of us lived
through the hard times but I do remember drinking tea at grandma's house from
old mayonnaise jars.
When she lived off Bell
Street we would go play on the cannons in that neighborhood and watch our Dad
walk downhill to the river to fish.
Grandma's house was
always a good time and I hope that my grands will know that same
experience. My children had many good times with my parents, as babies
always brighten the day and lift our spirits, just as God had
intended.
I remember the joy of
giving birth to mine and then laugh at the memory of my husband trying to hold
them, afraid they would break. He could not bear to change a diaper, would
gag and run, but when they were old enough to play and wrestle, he was always
ready.
His parents were
terrific people and his mother was my best friend but when she died around 1987
he got truly emotionally sick and began to drink often. Our relationship
got difficult and I spent many weekends taking the children and visiting my
parents.
Getting back on our
feet we had another baby in 1991 and he had more courage to handle her as an
infant. I was huge by then and Dr. Panteleon said my blood pressure was
too high and prescribed pills for that including a diet pill called
Phentermine. The next year Phen Fen was taken off the market and it
included the drug I was taking.
Christmas of 1996 he
was very sick and my dad passed away that morning. Charlie had colon
cancer surgery in January 1997 and was given a year to live.
During this time my
left foot began having very sharp pain in the arch where a tumor was
found. Seeing several doctors over the years I could not bear to have
surgery because they suggested amputation without ever doing a
biopsy.
All during this time I
was reading anything possible about my husband's cancer and it's treatments so I
felt smarter than any foot doctor I was seeing.
Everything went wrong
though with Charlie's treatment. The first biopsy was a CT guided needle
biopsy at Baptist Hospital and the sample was "lost" after all that pain and
suffering and Charlie's screaming. His doctor insisted on a colonoscopy where he
took his own biopsy of the tumor and knew.....Surgery lasted several hours and
recovery about three months, then chemo and radiation began. He had
surgery to get a port placed for the iv drugs but it clotted and his arm turned
purple and required surgery to get it out and a new one placed on the other side
of his chest but in a few weeks it went bad and a groshong cath was put in
place, but a coughing spell caused it to "slide out" across his
belly.
A second cath was put
in but the tips on the end were omitted and he got a staph infection which
caused lots of iv antibiotics. As his pain increased more scans were done
and more cancer found. Twice his cat scans were painful as the dye
ruptured his veins making him yell with pain and vomit on the exam
table.
The end was too painful
and with much neglect from his doctors, but I was not able to file a
lawsuit. I was weak. I was afraid. And I was very much
alone.
My babies kept me busy,
as they continued to blossom and become adults but I still had that horrible
fear and anxiety inside.
I feared all doctors
and all medicines. I had repeated nightmares and higher blood
pressure. My foot tumor continued to grow and hurt.
With the loss of
Charlie I also lost my healthcare and went to the clinic and health
department. Once in a while I might afford a visit to Dr. Ingram. I
avoided all those expensive mammograms and pap smears and things that a woman
needs at my age.
But I am at peace now
and enjoy my beautiful grandsons and look forward to the next birth. My
genealogy keeps me busy now; I have stopped driving because I would feel
dizzy and Pam now has my car.
Victor has passed away
and Junior has moved his family onto a few acres of land he bought, so we never
see each other. Pam has lost her husband and moved on with her new
life.
Most of my mom's
relatives have passed on and I keep in touch with a few of my dad's
relatives. His sister Bonnie is a diabetic and a spider bite on leg has
her in a wheel chair in a nursing home. His sister Bernice has had
glaucoma surgery and is 93 this year of 2009. His sister Irma has their
mother's Bible which was a gift from their grandmother.
They have given me
stories and information to add to my family tree and then I started working on
my husband's lineage too, all searchable in the box below.
