My Family: Chapter 10

Shirley age 10

One day, Dad took Sonny, my girlfriend, and me to the movies at Dehue. I never will forget the movie, it was Comin' Around the Mountain and was about hillbillies. I know it was a Monday night because that's the only day of the week they showed movies. Most of the time Dad went by himself, but this one time he took us with him. Shirley couldn't go because she was sick and Dr. Vaughn said she had a stomach flu. She was real sick and couldn't keep anything in her stomach. Dad told Mom to call him out of the theater if she got any worse. Aunt Belvia came down to our house to see Shirley and after taking one look at her told Mom it was more than a stomach flu. Since Uncle Noah had a car they took Shirley to Orville's Company doctor as that's where Uncle Noah worked in the mines. The Orville doctor said they had better get Shirley to the hospital right away, she had appendices and it was about to bust. Mom stopped at the movie house and got Dad out of the movies on the way to the hospital. It was a twenty to twenty-five minutes ride to the hospital. Shirley was fine after having her appendix out. they had busted and she stayed in the hospital a long time.

Grandma Francis had been living with Aunt Belva but she couldn't get along with Uncle Noah, so she came to live with us. Grandma didn't live with us for very long. Shirley said it was because Grandma and her got into a fight and she told her to leave. She was mean to us girls and treated us awful. I'll tell you some stories later.

Our family had gotten bigger and we needed a bigger house. I was eight by this time that's how long it took to get a four-room house with our name on the list.  We moved to Hutchinson which also had a hollow. There were about thirty homes.  It had a row of two stories houses on one side that had two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs, and on the other side was a row of three-room homes which sat against the mountain. There was a creek and road for only one car which ran down the center between the row of homes. And just as you came out of the hollow there were some four-room houses. Grandma isn't with us when we moved to a four-room two-story house when it become available up Hutchinson hollow.

Sonny age 10

We now have four rooms but still only two bedrooms upstairs. Mom made a living room with furniture and a kitchen downstairs and since we only had two bedrooms and one bed in each, Sonny had to share a bed with Shirley, Lucille, and I. We slept at the top of the bed while Sonny slept at the foot.  It was really crowded.  Mom doesn't like living up this holler because she couldn't visit any friends or family. Dad was still leaving on Fridays after work and didn't come back till Sunday.  It came home to her just how isolated she was when one day Ronnie was sucking on a lollypop and it came off of the stick getting stuck in his throat! I remember Mom screaming and crying as she ran up and down in front of our house wailing that he was dying. Steve, who lived next door, came to her rescue. He had to fight Mom to take Ronnie from her and get the lollypop out of his throat. Ronnie had turned blue already; he turned him up side down and patted his back hard. When the lollypop came out he gave Ronnie back to her.

Poodie age 9

We didn't have any toys to play with so we would wait until Mom got a new catalog and cut out the ladies who had on just underwear. Then we would cut out dresses and have paper dolls to play with all day on the porch. We didn't have any friends up the hollow. This one night I had a bad dream and was screaming. Dad couldn't get me awake and when I did wake up Mom cried that she wanted Dad to take me to the hospital. Dad told her to hush and for everyone to go back to bed, I just had a bad dream and I would be alright now. I remember the next day our neighbor on one side of us asked me why I was screaming last night when I told him I had a bad dream, he said I woke every one up.