Chapter One
The
first five memories I have of my childhood would shape my life forever. They are still as clear and real to me today
at the age of 76 as they have ever been. I am grateful they were happy ones.
The
first memory was when I was not yet two years old. I remember it as if it were
a dream and it plays like a scene from a movie in my mind.
I am
waking up and still warm and cozy under my covers. Light is softly spilling through the
partially open door to the kitchen and it is slowly creeping further into the
small bedroom where I am lying quietly in my bed. It must have been a crib
because I am looking out between long wooden spokes. I listen to the soft hum
of voices and smell the delicious aroma of sausage gravy floating on the air
from the warm kitchen. The coffee is ready. The fragrant smell of freshly
brewed coffee would remain one of my favorites for the rest of my life.
Granny
and Granddad are in the kitchen with Mother. Perhaps Daddy is, too, if he
hasn’t already left for work. Granny peeks around the corner to see if I’m
awake and then comes over to my crib and picks me up, making sure my blanket is
wrapped around me so I won’t get cold. She takes me to the kitchen, sets me in
my highchair, tucking the blanket in and puts a bib on me.
The
taste of that sausage gravy was wonderful. It was smooth and creamy and yet
there were little bits of tasty sausage in every bite. This earliest of my
memories encompassed all five senses and was the only good memory I have of my
Granny.
The
second memory is of my mother giving me a bath. She placed a small metal
washtub on the kitchen counter and, in my mind, I can still see her filling it
with water, testing it on her wrist to make sure it’s not too hot. Our home is
small; just a bedroom, kitchen, living room and a teeny tiny bathroom which had
only a small shower. Sometimes Mother would place the washtub in the bottom of
the shower and bathe me there where I could splash and play for a few minutes.
I imagine it was much easier to give me a bath standing up to a counter rather
than stooping over in the shower.
My
third memory is where I am sitting on the kitchen counter watching my mother
make peanut butter cookies. After she mixes the dough, she shows me how to
press the cookies flat with the bottom of a glass that had been dipped in
sugar. Then I use a fork to make crisscrosses on each one with Mother’s hands
helping me push down on the fork tines. I remember the warmth and the fragrance
of those freshly baked cookies. How funny that I don’t remember the taste of
them as I do of that sausage gravy.
The fourth and last memory of when we lived in the little house is Daddy carrying me out to the car. Mother had prepared a bed for me in the floorboard of the back seat right behind the driver. I recall it being dark so we must have been going on a trip and traveled at night. The car gently rocked and rumbled me back to sleep. I have no clue where we went that night but it's still a good memory.
That
tiny little house was actually two old Army barracks Granddad bought at a
bargain price in 1948 after WWII was over and they were breaking down all the
camps.
I was
born in Kansas City, Missouri on September 24, 1948 and we moved back to Texas
and into that little house in Granny and Granddad’s back yard when I was about
a year old.
We didn’t get to live there long, though. One day the water heater exploded and burned the house down to the ground. Thankfully, we were not at home.
Granddad
was a barber and worked around the corner from their house on Poinsettia Drive
in Fort Worth, Texas at Smity’s Barber Shop. It had the old fashioned red and
white and blue striped barber’s pole out in front that twirled around during
business hours. Being a barber was perfect for him since he had such a thick
beautiful head of hair.
Originally
a small four room frame house, Granddad kept adding on to it until it became a
maze of rooms that ultimately divided up nicely into two main sections much
like a duplex. At one time or another, every single one of Granny and
Granddad’s children lived there with their families. That’s one thing we and
our cousins all share – memories of that old house!
Granny was a housewife and was as short, plain and homely as Granddad was tall, dark and handsome. Granddad had a wonderful name – Linton Anthony. Granny’s name was Myrtle May. Granddad was kind and sweet while Granny was irritable and fussy.
Uncle
Truman and his family had been living in one side of the house and Granny and
Granddad on the other while we lived in the little house in the back yard. Uncle Truman had
recently bought land out in west Texas and moved his family out there. Back
before Granddad became a barber, he was a farmer. Cotton farmer, mostly. That’s
what Uncle Truman was now. After the fire, Granny and Granddad decided to move
out there close to their son and help him for a time.
We
then moved into the now empty house and had it all to ourselves. It was 1950
and these were happy days with Mother and Daddy. They loved to play canasta and
entertained often. Mother’s best friend was also her cousin. Dorothy and her
husband, Johnny, would come over most Saturday nights bringing their little boy
with them. He and I would play on the floor close to the card table. We could
hear the clinking of the China coffee cups being set back in their matching
saucers and the humming sound of our parents’ voices.
Little
Johnny and I would fall asleep under the coffee table long before they finished
their card game and I would wake up the next morning in my own crib. The house
was quiet as I slipped out of my bed and crept back into the living room where
I could see the remains of the party. There I would find the cups still holding
small amounts of coffee and the playing cards all fanned out just the way they
had laid them down.
I
would pretend to play cards and sip coffee just as I had watched the grownups
do. Once I actually took a sip of that coffee and promptly spit it out. How
could something that smelled so wonderful taste so bad?
Mother took in ironing to earn some extra money and asked Granny to look after me while she stood for long hours at the ironing board. At first, I was happy to be with my Granny but I soon realized she was not particularly fond of me and preferred that I be as quiet and unnoticeable as possible.
I loved my Granddad though. He was a handsome man – tall, dark and handsome with a full head of thick brown hair. Granny, on the other hand, was not attractive by any one’s measure. She was nearly as wide as she was tall so it’s a good thing she was short in stature. Her face was not a pretty one, especially when she scowled – which was often. She wore her plain brown hair pulled tightly back into a bun. Granny had moles all over her body. I was fascinated by them. She had dozens of large, fat, dark brown ones and then many more dozens of smaller, lighter brown moles. But no matter what, Granddad loved Granny fiercely and waited on her hand and foot. I often wondered what the attraction was that bound him so closely to her. She didn’t have a pleasing personality to compensate for her appearance. Granny was a nagger and a complainer and very little seemed to please her.
Granny
had two sisters, both younger than she, and one brother with whom she was
especially close. His name was Humey and every Sunday afternoon he would bring
his youngest daughter Rose Mary, over to visit. I was too little to go outside
by myself so, while the adults stayed in the living room and talked, Rose Mary
would take me out in the backyard to play. It was a large back yard with a
chicken coop next to the fence on one side and an old farm wagon and tractor in
the back by a shed with a tin roof and open on one side.
We played
on the tractor and had a lot of fun until Rose Mary fell off of it one day and
cut her leg rather badly on a sharp piece of rusty metal. Daddy had been coming
to the back door from time to time to check on us and he just happened to be
standing there when she fell. He was out of the door so fast she had not even
had time to cry out. He carried her into the house and Granny and Uncle Humey
came running with bandages and rubbing alcohol. Back then you didn’t go to the
doctor unless you had a bono fide emergency. They simply cleaned her up, put a
big bandage on her leg and sent her back outside to play.
While
Daddy’s meek and mild attitude was a comfort to children, it did not wear well
with Granny. She nagged at him relentlessly and hounded him at every turn. In
her eyes, he was a weak, insignificant little man and she made sure he knew just
exactly how she felt.
Daddy
was a shipping clerk at Monning’s Department Store downtown. He didn’t make
much money but faithfully brought his paycheck home every week and handed every
dime of it over to Mother.
Mother
got a job at Hotel Texas working the switchboard and that helped with the money
situation. That didn’t last very long, though, because Mother was going to have
another baby.
My
sister was born on December 21, 1951. They thought they were going to have a
baby boy and had chosen the name Lloyd Dean. When it turned out to be a girl,
they combined the names to Lloydine and since it was such an unusual and unique
name, they decided she didn’t need a middle one.
Life was good for our little family and we were happy.
