Children in the Closet - Chapter 15

 Chapter 15

We had just been living there a week or so when it snowed! On March 5. I was sitting outside on our tiny little balcony on the second floor watching the street when big fat flakes of snow began to fall. I ran over and knocked on Gloria’s door and she came out to see. We were as excited a couple of kids to see snow in March. Truth be told, we were a couple of kids! We each sat there with a baby on our laps taking in the beauty of a spring snow.

I loved Mrs. Morrison dearly and she loved us. Every weekday afternoon, I would put Summer down for her nap and leave the door open so I could hear her if she cried and I would go downstairs and watch soap operas with Mrs. Morrison. She left her door open, as well, and she always had a glass of tea waiting for me when I got there.

We watched several programs together and Mrs. Morrison called them her stories.  The first one was Search for Tomorrow followed by The Edge of Night and then our favorite - As the World Turns.  Summer would wake up and I’d go upstairs to get her and bring her back down as we finished out with The Secret Storm and General Hospital.

We didn’t watch all of them every single day and missed them completely on Tuesdays when we went to WMU but we saw enough to keep up with the story lines. Once again, I was looking for normal even in the television shows I was watching and never seemed to find what I was looking for. 

When I was younger and still at home, I would watch shows like Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver. They were wonderful and I longed to have that kind of family but even I knew that was never going to be a part of my life. Mother was nowhere near being a Mrs. Nelson or Mrs. Cleaver and Daddy was gone and he had never struck me as a big personality and wise father figure like the ones I saw on TV. Clayton was a wild card and didn’t fit into any of the family scenes.

I was a mother and wife and so much younger than the ones I saw on Mrs. Morrison’s soap operas and Jesse was unlike any of the men characters, so I was still left searching for what life should be like for me.

I noticed that the couples on TV would go out to dinner and perhaps take in a movie. I suggested this to Jesse and reminded him that he went out twice a month without me. Perhaps once a month, he could take me to a movie or something. Mrs. Morrison was only too happy to babysit Summer for us so the next Friday we had a date night! 

I will never forget the movie. We went downtown to the Majestic theater and saw Sean Connery in Goldfinger.  

Most of our Friday nights were spent buying groceries and going to the washeteria. Sometimes we would get a hamburger and maybe some fries. 

I told Jesse one day that I didn’t have much to do during all the long hours he was working. Summer was still taking two naps a day and Gloria had more family around than I did so we didn’t visit all that much. I tried cooking and slowly improved but our lack of money to buy all the ingredients for a recipe prevented me from doing more than prepare basic meals.

I watched Julia Child in The French Chef and yearned to be able to cook – not so much like her but just to be able to cook, period! The one thing I could do was set the table and make things as pretty as possible. I did that when Jesse was home. Most meals I ate alone and always had a book next to my plate.

Since I had only finished 7th grade, and I knew it wasn’t likely that I would be going back to school, I tried to figure out how I could somewhat educate myself. I read somewhere that if you read the Reader’s Digest from cover to cover every single month, you would be able to talk intelligently to absolutely anyone. So, every month when we bought groceries, I would buy the latest issue of Reader’s Digest for fifty cents and proceed to read every single word on every single page.

One day, Jesse came home with a couple of packages under his arms. He had been to a dime store looking for things I could do to stay busy and had found some craft kits. I was so excited! I had never done crafts before and opened up one of the packages. It was a picture plaque you could make by gluing on small colored stones and various other beads and such. The picture was outlined for you and everything was included – plaque, pattern, stones, even the glue!

Another package was netting and other materials to make poodle dogs. After I did these in the following weeks, he brought home paint by number kits. It was kind of him to think of things that would keep me occupied and these first projects would lead into a lifelong interest in arts and crafts.

I had suffered from toothaches since I was 11 years old, and the front tooth that had been chipped to the nerve when I fell off that bicycle four years ago had turned black with an infection. I coped with the pain better during the day but at night it would hurt so much I couldn’t sleep. I would wrap up in a quilt and go in the kitchen and lie on the floor underneath the open windows trying to get cold enough to fall asleep.

Jesse finally called a dentist and took me in. He said the tooth was too abscessed to pull immediately and gave us a prescription for antibiotics. He also gave me some pain pills to help get me through the next few days. 

I had been so embarrassed by the way my smile looked with that front black tooth and now I was even more embarrassed to not even have a front tooth. We didn’t have the money for a partial that the dentist suggested but Jesse promised we would save up and get it as soon as we could. That’s when I started wearing earrings every day from the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night. I didn’t want to be ugly so I thought if I looked nice all over except for my smile, I would feel better. I also learned not to smile as often.

It took him nearly a month but Jesse made good on his promise and I was so grateful. I continued to have toothaches nearly every day but none were quite as bad as that front one had been.

When Jesse started working for Kenneth as a mason’s helper, he was making $1.25 an hour. To make a little extra, Jesse would clean his boss’s house and do his laundry and Jesse did that himself. I never set foot in Kenneth’s house. I was proud of Jesse being such a hard worker and doing whatever he could to provide for Summer and me.

He had just been given a $.50 raise so he now made $1.50 an hour. However, a job came in that was out of town and Jesse, his boss and a helper named Claud, would be gone for a week, maybe more. Jesse knew I would be upset about him being gone so he didn’t tell me until the very last minute when he was walking out the door. I cried and cried at the thought of being left alone for all that time. He promised to come home on Friday. I tried to be a grown up about it but I couldn’t help being depressed.

I continued to take care of Summer and one evening we were walking up and down the big spiral staircase just for something to do when the lady who lived in apartment #1 opened her door and invited us in. Her name was Ann and she lived alone. She was probably about 50 years old. She could have been younger because at 15, nearly everyone around me those days looked old.

Ann was cooking her dinner and invited us to stay. The smell was wonderful! She was frying potatoes and onions. I don’t remember what else she was cooking that night but I never forgot those potatoes and onions. I had fried potatoes since I was 9 years old. But I had never thought to add onions.

It tasted so good that night and forever after I would cook potatoes and onions just like Ann did.

Friday came and went and Jesse didn’t come home. I was hysterical. Saturday was a long lonely day and he still didn’t come home. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Morrison came upstairs to tell me I had a phone call. We didn’t have a telephone but she was gracious in allowing us to use her number as long as we didn’t abuse the privilege. She stayed with Summer and I ran downstairs to the telephone. She had already told me it was Jesse. He apologized but said the job had run long and it had rained twice and that had stopped work. They still had another two days and then he would be home.

I was so relieved to hear from him that I didn’t cry or get upset at first. In my mind, I had begun to think he had left and would never be back and I had been wildly wondering what I would do and what would happen to me and my baby.

As it was, the only real and true concern I had was that we were all but out of groceries. We lived from Friday night to Friday night as far as food was concerned and here it was Sunday afternoon and he was telling me it would be Wednesday before he would be home. He suggested I borrow $5 from Mrs. Morrison but that wouldn’t really help since she didn’t have a car to take me to the grocery store and there wasn’t one within walking distance and I didn’t know how to ride the bus or know the schedule and routes that would take me to one. Plus, Summer was getting too big for me to carry her for long at a time. I only weighed 100 pounds and she was nearly 18 pounds herself plus I would have to carry the groceries.

I started to cry and he started to get mad. He said he would be home as soon as he could and hung up on me. I sat there a minute or two composing myself before slowly walking back upstairs. I tried to be cheerful about it and Mrs. Morrison pretended not to notice my red swollen eyes. She stayed a few more minutes and then went back downstairs.

Summer wasn’t on formula anymore so I checked to see how much milk we had left. I hadn’t used any of it and I was glad because there was enough for 3 more bottles. She would need more than that but I had a box of powdered milk that we kept for emergencies. I figured that if I mixed real milk with water and powdered milk – there would be enough for at least 3 days – maybe 4.

We were out of baby food but I found a package of spaghetti dinner and 2 cans of spaghetti plus a couple of cans of soup and a tin of tuna fish along with a few odds and ends that were in the refrigerator. We could make do. All at once I was grateful for that good meal we had at Ann’s a few nights before. 

I knew without a doubt we wouldn’t go hungry. I could always ask Mrs. Morrison for some food. The point was I didn’t want to have to do that. I was supposed to be a grown up now and not have to be asking for help or for someone to take care of me. 

We made do and Jesse came home late Wednesday afternoon. I already had Summer in her high chair feeding her spaghetti – again. It was a good thing she really like spaghetti. The first thing I did was clean her up and insist that Jesse take us to the grocery store – right then! And he did.

Two weeks later, he had to go out of town again. But this time he decided it would be better if I went over to Fort Worth and stayed with Mother. Clayton had left her for another woman and Mother and my siblings were living with Aunt Viola. I went downstairs and asked Mrs. Morrison if I could use her telephone. I called Mother and she asked Aunt Viola if it was okay if Summer and I came over to stay for a few days. She agreed and Jesse took us over the night before he was going out of town.

I was excited to be able to see my family again since I had been banned from the house after I married. Clayton told Mother if he ever saw my baby, he would kill her. I think he thought that would make me stay away and it did. When Mother left Clayton, she had nowhere to go and it was kind of Aunt Viola to take her and Lloydine, Lanita and Lonnie in. It was even kinder for her to let Summer and me stay with her for a few days.

We arrived with a diaper bag, a sack of clothes for me and $10 to buy groceries since we would be there nearly a week and Mother didn’t have extra money to feed us and Aunt Viola was already footing the bill for all of us to be there.

Sadly, Mother had taken up with an alcoholic named Benny. Lanita and Lloydine begged and begged Mother not to let him stay with them at Aunt Viola’s but she let him stay anyway. Benny scared all of us every bit as much as Clayton had, just in a different way. We had been traumatized by Clayton wielding his gun and shooting randomly out of the car window as he drove along with all of us kids in the back seat. And we remembered the time he shot the light bulb out in the bathroom and then shot a hole through my book. But Benny was even scarier if that was possible. 

For one thing, he stayed drunk most of the time. At least Clayton didn’t drink. Thank God for that. Plus, Benny was self-destructive and threatened to kill himself and would wave the gun around so wildly that we were afraid he would accidently shoot one of us. I was surprised that Aunt Viola let him stay there but our aunt was extremely partial to Mother and put up with a lot more from her than she would have from even her own daughter.

The first night I was there, things weren’t so bad. The second night, Mother uncharacteristically started drinking and got drunk. We were all piled up in the big bed and were talking together, Mother and all four of us kids and Summer was sitting in the middle of us and we were all playing with her. It seemed strange to us to hear Mother slur her words and act silly. She had never done this before. Pretty soon she went to sleep and we all crept off the bed and sat bewildered in the living room not quite knowing what to do. Aunt Viola worked nights as a nurse so Summer and I went in and slept on her bed and the kids made themselves beds on the floor with quilts and blankets. Benny didn’t come to the house that night and we later realized that was probably what made Mother mad so she drank up his liquor not that she wanted it but to get even with him. 

The next morning, she acted like nothing had happened so we played along and pretended just as we always did. In a way, I was sorry I had brought my baby into this situation. On the other hand, I had missed my brother and sisters and it made me sad to see that their life wasn’t any better than it had been and was perhaps even worse.

School was out for the summer so I did enjoy being there as long as it was just us. Aunt Viola stayed in her bedroom during the day to sleep and Mother was working at the answering service so as long as Benny didn’t show up, we had a good time. 

Summer wasn’t quite walking on her own yet so the kids took turns holding onto her and letting her toddle around the house. Lloydine took care of her while Lanita and I walked to August Pie Factory just a few blocks away and I bought us all some day-old baked goods. When we got back, I fried some bologna and potatoes and opened a big can of cling peaches for a good meal when Mother got home from work.

The next night Aunt Viola made a big pan of goulash for supper since she didn’t have to go to work and we had the apricot pie I bought for dessert. That was a nice evening until Benny showed up – drunk as usual. Mother left with him driving and we wondered why she would go anywhere with a man who was so drunk he couldn’t even walk straight. She said, “The more he drinks, the better he drives.”

Now that didn’t make sense even to us. But the good thing is that they were gone and that meant we had a good time together. 

Jesse arrived to take Summer and me home just a day after he said he would. I was glad to get away from Mother and Benny but sad that my sisters and brother had to stay there because there was nowhere else for them to go. 

Just a week later, Mother brought Lanita over to stay with me while Jesse once again went out of town. After Mother left, Lanita told me that Benny had threatened to commit suicide right there in front of all three of them – Mother was at work and Aunt Viola was asleep. Instead of shooting himself while they watched, he shot holes in the floor of Aunt Viola’s living room. That did it! She told Mother she had to leave. Mother did. She took the kids and moved back to Bewick Street where they had been living with Clayton. Turns out she didn’t leave Clayton, after all. He had left her for a 22-year-old school teacher. Mother was now 38 and had been married to Clayton for less than 6 years. 6 years of trauma and drama for her children and now life went from bad to worse for Lloydine, Lanita and Lonnie. Benny moved in with them.

Now that Clayton was gone, money was even tighter than it had been. They lived on rice and beans and little else. Grandma Collins would help out by taking food over from the Food Bank whenever she could. As a nurse, she knew more about what resources were available to needy families. Even so, there was never an abundance of nutritious food in the house. 

Mother used the fact she had so little money as the reason she let Benny live there. But the kids didn’t see how he was much help since he was too drunk to hold down a job.

One afternoon Mother told the kids to get in the car with her and Benny. They were going to the grocery store. Apparently, Benny had a bit of money and Mother wanted to use it for a bill of groceries before he drank it all up. Lanita was sick and didn’t want to go but Mother insisted. They had just gone a mile or two when the car died. They were on a side street – Benny avoided major roads and highways – because of his drinking. Everyone got out to push it so except Lanita. She was lying down in the back seat and when she felt the car start rolling and picking up speed and heard everyone screaming and yelling, she jumped over the seat and got behind the wheel. However, her legs were too short to reach the brake pedal so she crouched down in the floor board and pushed down on the brake with both hands and managed to bring the car to a stop. When she raised herself up, she saw that the car was inches away from going through a plate glass window of a business. Mother, Lonnie and Lloydine ran up to the car and when they all looked around for Benny, they found he had fallen flat on his face in the road. He was so drunk he just passed out and lay there without even realizing how close they had come to wrecking the car with Lanita in it.

Mother never seemed to be able to attract a decent man and she seldom gave up on a bad one.

Even after all the shenanigans Benny pulled, she did not make him leave. One day a week or so after the car incident, Benny took Lonnie with him over to see a buddy. They started drinking and when it was time to go home, Benny was so drunk he couldn’t see to drive. He sat 8-year-old Lonnie in his lap and told him to steer the car. Lonnie did and they made it home. Mother didn’t seem to think there was a problem with that at all. 

Thankfully, Benny left one afternoon to go to the store and didn’t come back for a couple of months. The kids were so relieved. However, Mother managed to hook up with a couple of other losers while she waited for Benny to return.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I waited until late this afternoon to decide whether to publish this unedited chapter or not.

Amber is my editor and she is one busy lady!

Not only is she the mom of Trystan, Kailey, Harrison and Logan - who are all the within a minute of being the same age, she also supports all four in their hockey games, the girls' band, and is a free lance writer working on her own writing projects.

This photo is of her as she was going to interview an interior decorator for a featured article in Fort Worth magazine.

I'm grateful for her expertise and will update this post with her added edits soon.

I also thank my friend, Nikki, for catching mistakes for me.

And, as always, thank you for reading my words and being so supportive of me.

Spring in the Country!

 

We arrived at the ranch late Saturday afternoon.

I have to say that driving the big white truck is a lot of work!

So thankful it's only a two hour trip!

Makes me think that a longer drive to Galveston may not be on the calendar for June.

But then I would have my Chevrolet Equinox which is such an easy vehichle to drive.

For whatever reason, the last trip here and now this one has been hard. We stopped in Hillsboro for Whatabugers and onion rings and then drove on in.

It's all decked out in spring greenery. 

I was so exhausted that once I put up the perishables, I brought food from home to last a week, I crawled into the girl bunk for a blessed nap!

This morning I took a tour of the front yard and all the gorgeous flowers!

First time we've seen this pretty flower here.

I planted some wildflower seeds in past years and wonder if this might be one of them.

Dandlions are important for the bees!

We have a bumper crop!

I love the Indian paintbrushes.

Our rose garden is beautful and I shall work in it tomorrow.

Weeding and treating for fire ants!

I plan on cutting a couple of huge bouquets to enjoy this week.

We had our coffee on the front deck and listened to the birdsongs.

Remmie and Rugar came up to see me and I had meaty bones I had saved for them!

I love these dogs!

Louis Dean had a camfire burning this morning and has kept it going all day.

It's good to be back in the country!

I have been working on my book this afternoon and am still having problems with my mouse.

Thankfully when I restarted the computer, it is now working.

Maybe I need to buy a new one.

My plans this week are to write and write some more.

I had started chapter 39 but I deleted it and started again.

Amber advised me to tell my story in as few words as possible and that is going to help me write the next few chapters. Happy days are ahead in my book when I reach 2005!

Thank you, all my dear blogging friends, for reading my words and encouraging my heart.

You are such blessings to me.

Our Gazebo and Kitchen Deck is all Ready for the Spring and Summer Season......

 Thursday was a dark, chilly and rainy day and I decided to spend a few extra hours in bed reading and praying and thinking.

We meant to go to the ranch but decided to wait another day...and then yet another day,

This week we fimally put the finishing touches on our gazebo!

The black and white buffalo check rug pulled the whole theme together.

I have a serious number of white tableclothes, bedspreads, curtains, and covers.

So I decided to use them in the gazebo as well as the front porch.

Since the porch gets intense sun, the white fabrics won't fade.

We haven't spent time in here since October so it feels really special.

It's all comfy and cozy....

All the comforts of home!

Fridge that holds water, Diet Cokes, beer and such....

a microwave to heat up our coffee and a coffee pot for Louis Dean.

He has it all set up but he doesn't remember that -  so he makes his coffee in his music room.

And when we sit out in the gazebo - he remembers.

Alas......dementia and Alzheimer's deletes the recent memories.

It's not something Louis Dean can control but it is something I need to be aware of and navigate around in order to insure we continue to live a good life together.

I'm ever so grateful that Louis Dean is a happy man.

He loves me....every bit as much as I love him.

We love our life and thank God for each and every day we have together.

Louis Dean and I met on eHarmony 20 years ago.

Our wedding anniversary is June 26th.

Best 20 years of my life!

What a blessing that God brought us together.

Louis Dean is and always will be my Knight in Shining Overalls.

He can't do all the things he used to do....

.....but he likes to say, "I can still dive off deeper and come up drier than most."

That saying is from an old Shep Wooley song.

Louis Dean is always ready to hang things up for me.

Together we have made a beautiful garden area where we can sit and enjoy the birds and the pond music.

Louis Dean keeps our bird feeders full and we love watching them as they visit them and then go to the pond for a drink.

We love our life and praise God for each and every day.

I know I am a little eccentric but I'm loving the fence decorations.

My morning view with the first cup of coffee as I pray.

I love all our cozy places on the kitchen deck.

This is a good spot to peel veggies and food prep for our dinners.

There's an outlet beside the table and I can even put the roaster out there and cook.

Spring is a beautiful time to be out here!

The air is so fragrant with the scent of the honeysuckle.

W love our outdoor living area and spend some time outside every single day.

Summer is coming and when the temps climb, we will be confined to early mornings and late evenings.

The rain of the last couple of days changed our plans but that's okay.

We will be going to the ranch tomorrow and stay for a week.

I hope to do some serious writing on my book.

Monday will be chapter 15 so I am going to have to get busy to write the rest of my book in order to finish it this year.

Tuesday's Treasures With Brenda....

I look forward to Tuesdays with Brenda and they are always good ones!

Some weeks we find a real haul and some weeks a few things but they are all treasures to us.

 

We shopped three thrift stores and all of them are on Beltline Road in Irving.

Texas Thrift first and then a few blocks down is Goodwill and another few blocks past that is Thrift Giant.

I love the olive tree!

The wood and metal things are now hanging on the kitchen side outside the house.

Yes, I have run out of walls inside the house and moved on to the outside.

You never know what you will find when you're out thrifting. So many times I have something I need in mind, as does Brenda, and it seems to miraculously appear on the shelves! Not all the time but frequently.

Case in point, Sherry has been looking for smaller crockpots and I joined her in the search.

Not a crockpot in sight lately! All in good time.

Quality towels can be expensive but Brenda found these for me and I am replacing some shabby worn ones for better towels.

The yellow cushion is now in the sewing room on a chair and the curtain underneath it will go to the ranch and will hang above the bathroom sink.

Speaking of the ranch, we had planned on leaving tomorrow but have decided to wait until Friday.

We have loose ends to tie up and since it is going to storm on Thursday, we decided to take an exttra day here at home.

This is a Scentsy burner and now lives in our gazebo!

I save bits and pieces of spent candles to make firestarters or wax burners.

Making use of every bit if the fragrant wax.

The coffee place mats match a rug I have at the camper.

A brand new set of autumn lights!

 $5!

Two wine canvases at $1.50 each!

Louis Dean has already hung them on the fence across from the kitchen.

We've been working hard on the gardens, yard and areas.

Yes, we are old and elderly, but we keep at it!

Pulling weeds, planting flowers and vegetables.

Every morning we have coffee outside - either in the gazebo or the kitchen deck or the table on the front driveway or the new sunset deck in the back yard.

Bit by bit, step by step, here a little, there a little.

"For precept must be upon precept, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:"

Isaiah 28:10

I take all of these words to mean we must keep on doing what we can as well as we can for as long as we can.

And that's what Louis Dean and I are doing!

I pray you are as well.

We have been working on the gazebo and I'll show you the rest of the finished decorations.

I ordered a black and white buffalo checked rug and it made all the difference!

Children in the Closet...Chapter 14

 Chapter 14

It was early in January 1964 that Jesse began looking for an apartment for us that was away from his mother. She was always getting mad at him and threatening to make us move, so he thought we should get out of there as soon as possible. I admit to being a bit afraid of her. Late at night when we were sleeping, I would wake up and find her standing beside our bed without any clothes on just staring at us. I would not let her know I was awake but would lie there until she left. When I told Jesse about this, he put a latch lock on the door separating our rooms from the main part of the house and when she discovered that, she got mad again.

He looked at the "for rent" ads in the newspaper and found a tiny one-room efficiency apartment on Haskell Avenue. We went to look at it and rented it then and there for $12 a week. It was a tiny little house with a bed, an old loveseat, a kitchen table and four chairs, a small refrigerator and an even smaller stove with a bathroom the size of a closet. But it looked wonderful to us! As small as it was, there was enough room for Summer’s baby bed. We had just bought one for her at the unclaimed freight warehouse where you could buy things cheaper than in regular stores.

The small house was located behind a huge old two-story home that had been turned into apartments. The houses on Haskell had once been large mansion-style homes with grand entrances and winding staircases spiraling up to the second floor. We were happy to find our own place and moved in the next day.

Mother would bring Lanita over on occasion to spend the weekend with me. Lanita was a big help with Summer when she would wake up at night and cry for her bottle. I loved having my sister stay and keep me company and I think she enjoyed getting away from Clayton and all the drama.

There wasn't a grocery store within walking distance of our tiny apartment, so Jesse and I drove around one day to scope out the best place to buy our groceries and do our laundry. We found a couple of places and would alternate going to one and the next week to the other. We set aside our grocery money, rent money and gas money in envelopes every payday. We had another envelope for doctor bill and one for miscellaneous expenses. If we had extra, it would go in the miscellaneous and we could use it to buy clothes, medicine or even go out to eat a hamburger every once in awhile.

Jesse had paid his mother everything he had borrowed. That helped their relationship some.

We visited over there a few times after we moved but not very often. I missed seeing his sisters.

We had a small television and, besides my avid reading, that was what kept me company when Jesse was working. We had our favorite TV programs – The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Gomer Pyle: USMC, The Adams Family and a few others. 

On Sunday nights we would watch several hours of programming on CBS, beginning with Lassie, My Favorite Martian and our very favorite, The Ed Sullivan Show. On February 9, the Beatles made their first U.S television debut and performed five songs. The audience went wild. I liked the band and their music. It was different, all right, but I had no idea why the girls were screaming and carrying on so. After the Beatles performed and a commercial was played, a magician named Fred Kaps came out to do his act. I felt kind of sorry for him, having to follow the Beatles.

I watched The Judy Garland Show next followed by Candid Camera and What’s My Line? By then it was 10:30 PM and Jesse had been asleep for several hours. He wasn’t even awake to see the Beatles. I told him all about it the next day but he wasn’t impressed.

The routine of my days didn’t vary much. I would mix up tuna salad at night and fill a jar with it, wrap up at least 4 slices of bread, put it all in a brown paper bag and set it in the fridge for Jesse to take to work with him the next morning. Since I got up in the night whenever the baby cried, he didn’t wake me in the mornings. Instead, he quietly got a breakfast of cereal and milk and was gone by the time the sun came up.

When I woke up for the day, I would feed Summer, give her a bath and then I would get dressed. I kept the tiny efficiency as clean as possible wiping off the counters, table, inside and outside of the refrigerator and the stove. I mopped the old cracked linoleum floor every morning and made the bed every single day. I did some laundry in the bathtub since we didn’t have many clothes. Mostly I washed mine by hand in the tub because Jesse’s were too dirty to get clean and needed a real washing machine. And, of course, Summer’s little dresses and gowns and booties were easy to wash. I was young and leaning over the bathtub didn’t bother me. After all those years of not having access to a bathroom all the time, I was truly grateful for the one I had now. I tried to stay busy and would read when there wasn’t anything else to do. As a last resort, I could always watch TV.

One Friday evening in late February, I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and looking out the window when I saw a young couple with a baby get out of their car. They took their groceries up the rickety looking stairs to an apartment building of the main house. I watched as a light came on in the window.

It was at that moment I realized how desperately lonely I was. At just 15 years old, I was married to a husband who was only home on rainy days, with a five-month-old baby and not a friend in sight. I can’t tell you the tremendous relief and joy I felt when I saw another young couple that seemed to be a mirror image of us!

One Monday morning after feeding and bathing the baby, I gathered up my courage and dressed Summer and myself as nicely as possible and walked to the house next door. I had no idea what I was going to say but I was determined to meet that other couple.

As it turned out, there was a sign on the front door that read "Apartment for Rent."

I pushed open the big, old-fashioned front double door and found myself in what used to be a huge mansion-style home. The foyer was large and open and you could look up at the second floor with a landing with an elegant railing. 

There on the first floor to my right was a closed apartment door and a small "Apartment One" sign to the left of it.

To my left was a door marked "Apartment Two" and below that a sign that said, "Knock for Assistance." I did. An elderly lady came to the door and introduced herself as Hallie Morrison. I inquired about the apartment for rent and she took me right up to see it. It was much bigger than where we were living. This one had two large rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, plus a full-sized bathroom. The rent was $15 a week. The extra room would be well worth the additional $3! 

I was already so excited and then Mrs. Morrison told me another young couple lived just across the hall. They had three rooms but had to share the bathroom with a tenant named Bill, who lived in the third apartment on that second floor. He only had one room but lived alone so I guess that was all he needed.

I felt sure Jesse would agree to move to a better place nearby and since we had not signed a lease or anything, we simply paid rent by the week, we could move in on the next Saturday.  Mrs. Morrison said she would hold the apartment for us while I checked with Jesse when he got home from work.

We had been in our one-room efficiency for one month, and Jesse was all for us upgrading our living arrangements. I spent the following days anxiously waiting for Saturday to arrive! Jesse had to work, but he promised to get home as early as he could. Mother had brought Lanita over to spend the weekend and between the three of us, we were able to move our clothes and things pretty quickly. There wasn't much food to transport since we decided we wouldn’t buy groceries until after we moved. I was dancing around playing house in the new apartment when Jesse brought in the baby bed.

The new apartment was furnished and with much nicer things than our last one. The kitchen had a full-size stove, and a large cast iron and enamel sink with a ribbed drainboard. There was also a full-size refrigerator and an old white Hoosier cabinet with an enamel work surface and tilt-out drawers for flour and sugar. The walls were papered with a wild flower design and there were three windows for natural light at the far end where the table and four chairs sat. It was nicer than anything I could have even imagined!

The room that served as both the bedroom and living room, had a slightly sagging couch and an old coffee table, a vanity dresser with a mirror and a tall matching bureau, a full-sized bed and a small bedside table. The walls were covered in a beautiful wallpaper with blue- and burgundy-colored flowers and huge green leaves and vines on a white background. 

The bathroom had a white sink and a deep, white claw footed bathtub. All the floors were linoleum and had worn places but not cracked. I loved every bit of it!

There was a door in both the kitchen and the bedroom but the front door was to the bedroom. I knew it was the front door because it had a little sign to the left of it saying "Apartment #4."

Lanita stayed with me the whole weekend and Mother came back to pick her up on Sunday. I was so proud of where we lived and felt like an honest-to-goodness grown up.

We now had $12 for groceries instead of the usual $15, but we made do. The important thing was to buy formula for the baby and inexpensive food to feed us. I wasn’t much of a cook but I knew how to cook a good pot of beans. We bought packages of macaroni and cheese along with Chef Boyardee spaghetti. These came in a package similar to the mac and cheese except, along with the box of dry spaghetti, it also included a tall skinny can of meat sauce and a small can of dry grated cheese. Bread, milk, dry cereal, a little bit of fruit, a dozen eggs and several cans of tuna fish rounded out our grocery list. We later added baby food to our purchases but also fed Summer spaghetti and scrambled eggs as she got a little older.

With every purchase at the grocery store, we earned S&H Green Stamps, trading stamps with a reward program where you could purchase things. After we put up the groceries, Jesse and I would paste the new stamps in the booklets and browse through the Redemption catalog to see what we wanted to get when we redeemed our stamps.

The first thing we got was a ceramic lamp to sit on top of the television set. It was shaped like a pair of Siamese cats and you used a yellow light bulb so when it was turned on, the cats eyes shone. We thought it was beautiful!

Jesse and I loved our apartment and I loved our landlady even more. She invited me to church with her and I jumped at the chance. I couldn’t drive yet so I was limited to where I could go. Only a drugstore on the corner was within walking distance. Mrs. Morrison didn’t drive either, but she rode the bus downtown to do her shopping. And every week either her daughter or one of her sons would pick her up and take her to the grocery store. Then every Sunday, a big car would pull wildly up to the curb in front of the house and Mrs. Morrison's best friend, Mrs. Reed, would toot her horn for Mrs. Morrison to come out. I started going with the two of them every week and then began to join her on Tuesdays for WMU, as well. That stands for Women’s Mission Union. They had a lesson and a pot luck lunch that was always a feast!

Oh, the memories of all that food! I didn’t bring anything to contribute that first year I attended. Mrs. Morrison always told me, “Just bring yourself, little sweetie! I have more than enough for both of us.” One of her specialties was squash casserole and another was chocolate cream pie, or something she called burnt sugar pie. Whatever Mrs. Morrison made was always delicious. I learned a lot from her.

There was a nursery at the WMU and the lady who oversaw it loved babies and children in general, and would always make such a fuss over Summer Dee. I was the youngest lady there, naturally. Most of the ladies were middle age to elderly and some were just flat out old. Mrs. Morrison was 63 when I met her and I thought of her as old then. Little did I know that she would live for more than 30 years from then and be an important part of my life and in the lives of all my children.

The memories of all those church experiences when I attended as a child with my siblings where the congregation ignored us and even scorned us at times began to fade under the care and kindness of the good people at Mrs. Morrison's church.

I invited Jesse to go to church with us but he didn’t want to. Instead, he started going out every other Saturday night with "the boys." I had no idea who he was talking about because the only friends we had were our neighbors that lived across the hall, Gloria and Joe Paul

On some late Saturday afternoons, they would come over to our apartment and we would gather around the kitchen table and play board games. Among the four of us we had four games --Sorry, Scrabble, Easy Money and Monopoly. Their little boy was just slightly older than our little girl so the children would crawl around together on the floor and play. I loved these get-togethers. Gloria and Joe Paul were young but not as young as we were. They would joke and cut up with each other and I noticed how they acted toward one another. I was just as concerned about whether Jesse and I were a "normal couple" every bit as much as I had been concerned with whether we were a "normal family" when I lived at home with my siblings.

I realized that I did not have a good idea of what a real marriage looked like. Was it supposed to be like Mother and Daddy’s? No. Nor did I know any one other than my Aunt Ruby and Uncle Humey that were married and acted nice to each other as well as to other people including their children. Not my Aunt Irene and Uncle PR. They seemed to stay irritated with each other. Maybe Granny and Granddad but they were old. Aunt Alice and Uncle Truman were most likely a happy couple, but I hadn’t been around them much since Mother left Daddy and married Clayton.

Something else had been bothering me about being married from the very beginning. Jesse had been interested in sex before we got married, but he seemed to have lost interest afterwards. I could not figure it out. At first, I thought it was because he worked so hard. But even when he wasn’t working long hours and had some free time, he still wasn’t interested in me.

One day I was playing on the floor with Summer in the living room area, which was just across from the bathroom. As I was lying on the floor, I noticed a stack of magazines under the claw foot bathtub. I was curious about what they might be and who may have left them there. I was shocked to discover they were magazines full of naked women in all sorts of unbelievable poses. I felt sick to my stomach when I realized they were Jesse’s and were likely the reason he stayed in the bathroom so long in the evenings.

I didn’t know what to do, so I put them back.  Later I mentioned to Jesse that I thought I saw something under the old bathtub and was going to try and pull it out.  The next time I looked under there, the magazines were gone.

I did not get to see much of my siblings and mother after I left home. It was long distance to call between Fort Worth and Dallas at that time. My Aunt Alice worked in an office that had a direct line that wasn’t long distance, so I communicated to my family via messages to her. I was so appreciative that Mrs. Morrison let us use her phone when we needed.

Granddad, Mother’s father, had been sick for over a year and early in May, Aunt Alice called to tell me he had passed away. She told me when and where the funeral would be and I said I would be there if Jesse could get off work and take me.

He was still driving his 1957 Mercury and, as it turned out, he wasn’t working for a few days. His next job wasn’t quite ready yet so he was able to take me to the funeral. We were late getting there, though. Jesse ran a stop sign and we were hit by another vehicle. It wasn’t a bad wreck but it scared me. It was the first wreck I had ever been in. I had wrapped Summer up in a blanket and put her on the floorboard by my feet on another blanket. She was just six months old so she was asleep when the car hit us. Thankfully she was not hurt. None of us were. The car was damaged but still drivable. Everyone had gone to the cemetery for the burial and that’s where we went, having missed the service entirely.

Everyone was sad about losing Granddad. He was loved by everyone and my siblings and I felt like he loved us. Our Granny seemed to only love Lloydine out of the four of us.

Jesse and I stayed as long as we could visiting with my siblings afterwards. We had missed the meal for the family that was served before the funeral and I wasn’t allowed to go to the house since Clayton was still in the picture. And I was still shaken up from being in that wreck so we drove back home. Jesse was in a bad mood and was complaining about getting hit and the damage done to his car, even though the accident was his fault.

Granddad’s funeral had been on a Friday so Jesse left early Saturday morning to go look at cars. He found a 1962 green Catalina Pontiac he liked. He came back to the apartment and picked Summer and me up and said we were going to go over and see his mother. He told her by trading in his Mercury, he could buy the car he had found. He said he could afford the car payments and they would accept his trade-in as a down payment. He just needed her to co-sign the loan. After a lot of talking, he convinced her to do it and Monday morning he told his boss, Kenneth, he would be at work a little late. He went to the dealership and picked up the papers for his mother to sign, took them to her while she was at work and then returned them to the dealership.

Jesse was true to his word and never missed a single car payment. However, his mother never let him forget she had co-signed for him, but that was the last time he asked her to do that. By the time he was ready to buy another vehicle, he had built up enough credit of his own to purchase one.

At 15, I was still too young for a license but I would be turning 16 in less than six months, so Jesse began to teach me. The fact that the car had an automatic transmission made it so much easier for me to learn. He would take me to some backroad areas or to a big vacant parking lot. It was scary but if none of my younger siblings were afraid to drive, then I needed to be brave and learn to do it.

Now that I wasn’t at home with my siblings anymore, they had learned to take care of themselves and that included doing the laundry. While we had often lived close enough to a washeteria to walk when I was home, now they lived over two miles away from one. 

Mother would get off work and Lloydine would have the dirty clothes all tied up in bedsheets. Mother would give her the keys to the car and Lloydine and Lonnie would go to the washeteria. Lloydine would drive there and back. She was just 12 years old. Mother's boyfriend, Benny, had either taught all three of them how to drive or they all had to learn on their own when he got too drunk to get them home, but they all knew how to drive long before I did.

Lonnie was driving before he was even in the third grade. He had a friend who had a paper route. The friend's name was Zach and his father worked as a disc jockey for KFJZ radio station. He had a 1963 Chevy Super Sport in maroon with a black interior and bucket seats. Zach was a little older than Lonnie and his dad allowed Zach to use the car for his paper route. Lonnie loved cars and offered to help Zach throw the afternoon papers and, in return, Zach would buy Lonnie a cherry Coke and go to Forest Park where he would let Lonnie drive his car.

Zach and his family lived just a few streets over from Bewick where Lonnie lived. One Sunday morning, Lonnie recalled walking over to Zach’s house to help him throw the morning paper and found his friend drunk. Zach asked Lonnie to do the paper route so my brother grabbed the keys and did just that. Lonnie was just nine years old.

From then on, anytime Zach needed Lonnie to do the route, Lonnie did it. Mrs. Hurt was Zach’s mother's name and she was such a sweet lady. Lonnie loved her and she loved Lonnie and always made sure Lonnie had a good meal to eat every time he came over. Lonnie and Zach remained friends and by the time Lonnie was in the 5th and 6th grades, Mrs. Hurt ensured he had nice blue jeans and shirts to wear to school. She would wash, starch and iron them. From that time on and even into adulthood, Lonnie always wore his clothes all starched and his jeans sharply creased. Lonnie never forgot her kindness to him. In later years, Lonnie and another of his friends, Little Joe, would see Mrs. Hurt out in her car just stopped somewhere, like she had just pulled over and fallen to sleep. Lonnie would hop out and drive her home with Little Joe following behind in his car. For a long time, they thought she was senile. Then they discovered she was drinking too much bourbon. Her son, Zach, died young and her husband had left and she was all alone. Lonnie and Little Joe watched out for her as long as she lived.

Back in the mid '60s, you could get a hardship license at 14, so young drivers were not unheard of at the time. But I don’t think any of us got our licenses until we were 16. And none of us ever had a serious wreck or got in trouble for driving.