My Family: Chapter 42

There was a curb at the end of our row of houses and it was out of sight of our house and

The Dillo home in Hutchinson

that was as far as we would let any boy walk us home.  In the summer time, we would have a traveling caravel and a traveling roller rink come up the hollow - not at the same time. The roller rink would stay for at least two months, so we did a lot of skating. I would get away from Shirley while she was skating - I would do my thing. One day, I was not skating  while she was, three boys came by and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride, I agreed. I was sitting on one boy's lap with my back against the door and my legs on the other two. I always wore my hair in a ponytail.  We drove by the roller rink real fast. I don't know how fast we were going, but Shirley said we were doing at least 90 mph. We were laughing so hard I didn't notice Shirley standing on the side of road watching us. She turned to one of the other girls and asks who those fools were. One girl told her I was in the car. When we pulled in at the roller rink and stopped, Shirley grabbed the car door, jerks it open and got hold of my ponytail. She dragged me out of that car and we had a fight right there in front of everyone. Of course, the boys jumped in and told her to let me alone. They yelled to “give her nickel and send her home” but all she would say was she was going to tell on me this time for sure.  Shirley never did like anything me and my girlfriends thought was fun and the boys would always ask why she had to come along. They stopped asking this after awhile because Shirley got older, had more fun, and got to know all the young people in the hollow - she knew more teenagers than I did. I don’t know or remember any of them because I didn't spend my summers at home. Shirley told me the driver of that car was a boy that liked her and she didn’t like him.  He had been mad at her so that was why he asked me to get in the car. You know, I didn’t realize she had any boys that liked her but Dave and Chuck.

For all his faults, Dad would give you the shirt off his back and he always stood for the little guy. Once he was checking up on Shirley and I at the roller rink when I heard him say to some guy, “why don’t you pick on someone your own size.” There he stood having words with a guy who was picking on a smaller guy. When Dad interfered, the big guy walked away and the smaller guy thanked Dad and then he walked away. I went over and told Dad he embarrassed me fighting. He said that it was an unfair fight because one guy was bigger than the other; Dad had been drinking so I walked away. When I looked again, he was gone. Dad was always fighting. The guys would tell me that they seen my father throw some guy out of the Beer Garden window, they would be laughing while telling me but  I didn’t think it was funny. My dad was not all that large himself. He was about five feet eight inches tall and weighted one hundred and sixty pounds, but he acted like he was ten feet tall.

Once, I went to the Beer Garden with Dad and left him sitting at a table. He was slowly getting drunk and I went to get a pop. The person behind the bar was looking at me funny and I knew something was wrong. I turned around and saw Dad was having a fist fight with another customer. I got so upset I jumped in the middle of them, they stopped fighting, and we left. I never went in a public place with Dad again.

My Family: Chapter 41

You can imagine what sparse Christmases we had at my house, but the one which stands out is the one where I’m thirteen; I didn’t get any gifts that year.  Shirley was sixteen and she wanted a record player. Lucille was eleven and she wanted a set of telephone's which had a wire connected to them. You could go into another room and talk over them just like walkies talkies. Sonny  wanted a BB gun and I wanted a doll. Dad and Mom went in to Logan that year. They told Shirley to watch us and if we were good; they would bring us back something. I begged Mom to please bring me back a doll, I wanted nothing else. She said I was too old dolls but she would think about getting me one. I prayed all that day, December 24,1954. “Please God, let them bring me back a doll.”

When they returned, they gave Shirley a record player with a couple of records, they gave Sonny a BB gun, Ronnie got some toy cars and a red wagon, and Bonnie was given some baby toys.  Lucille and I are still waiting for our gifts.  There was a bath house connected to our house and Mom told Lucille to go out there and bring in this big box. She told Lucille everything in the box was for her - in the box is a doll, the toy telephone, a set of dishes, and a lot more that I don't remember now. It’s the only Christmas my sister, Lucille, remembers because she got a lot of toys. After awhile, I realized they got me nothing! I felt hurt and I screamed and cried as I watched as the rest played with their toys. Lucille and I talked about that Christmas after we grew up and had families of our own; we couldn't understand how our parents could forget me. I know they did truly forget me because when Mom realized they didn’t have a gift for me, you could see she felt sorry and bad about it. She said I was too big for a doll anyway, and it was too late to go to the store and get me something. Besides they didn’t have any money left, they spent it all on whiskey. She said I could share Shirley’s record player.  Yeah, right. Here’s a girl who wouldn’t let me touch anything that belong to her and she’s going to share - I don’t think so! 

The next morning, I went to see what my friends got for Christmas. Two of my friends got Christmas stockings with fruit and candy, and my second cousin got a Shirley Temple doll which her mother (my first cousin who is the same age as my parents) never let her play with it. I would go to her house when her parents were not home and we would go open the clothes press and take the doll out to look at it then we would put it back. I asked my cousin what happen to the doll years after we grew up and she said that she didn't know.

Mom, Grandma Hattie, Aunt Alice, Aunt Tince

Later, our next door neighbor went to Logan and brought me back a doll. I hung the doll on Grandma’s wall and forgot about it. By the time I thought about the doll it was gone.  

My Family: Chapter 40

Dad Wilbur Dillo sitting on back porch sleeping

One night, Aunt Hannah and I were at her kitchen table talking when we hear the door open onto the porch and in walked my Dad.  He was stinking drunk and hollering at the top of his lungs for me.  I quickly got up out of my chair and went to stand by Aunt Hannah. When he staggered into the kitchen, Aunt Hannah asked him what he was doing all the way in Man.  He said he just got finished beating Shirley for lying to him and came to beat me; he was sure there was something I needed to get a whopping for.  Aunt Hannah told him he was crazy and to go home; he wasn’t going to beat me for no reason.  He stayed and talked to Aunt Hannah until he sober up a little bit then he left with a parting shot for me to stay out of trouble.

I went home the next day to see how bad he had beat Shirley. It had been about six months since I had been home.  When I got there I saw that Shirley was a mess; she had two black eyes and bruises all over. Shirley had all her teeth pulled since the last time I saw her which just made her look worse. I asked her what made her lie to Dad when she knew he would have killed us for lying. She said she didn't lie, he just misunderstood her. She went to the rolling rink with a girlfriend and her boyfriend, Tick. When she got home, Dad asked her where she’s been and who she was with. She told him and the next night when Dad ran into another friend with the same sounding name, Tack. Dad asked him why Tack was keeping his daughter out so late. Confused, Tack said he wasn’t; that he hasn’t seen Shirley for a couple of days. That's when Dad went straight home and beat her for lying. I left and went back to Aunt Hannah's where it as safe.

The next time I came home, Shirley was back to being her beautiful self only this time she had one too many boyfriends.  She was in love with this boy, Chuck, who lived farther up the hollow. I think they had talked about marriage. Chuck was in the Army and he would visit on weekends.  He had been seriously thinking of going A.W.O.L. but Shirley talked him into going back. Meantime, Shirley met Dave, and he asked her to marry him. Shirley and I (I had just gotten home from one of my aunt’s, I don't remember which one) were in Mom and Dad’s bedroom talking, while Chuck sat in the kitchen drinking Moonshine with the house full of people. Shirley explained to  me; who Chuck was, why he was there, about Dave, and how she was in love with two boys. Chuck had just gotten discharged out of the Army because he had developed a heart condition. He hadn't gone home yet and Shirley had been trying to get him to go home. We heard a commotion out in the kitchen and when we peeked into the room, we saw Dave in the house. He took one look at Chuck, turned around, and walked back out. Shirley asked me what should she do, and I told her if she wanted Dave she should to climb out of the window and go after him but she better hurry before he got away, however, if she loved Chuck more all she had to do was go into the kitchen.

Shirley climbed out the bedroom window and after awhile  Chuck left to go someone else house where he drank even more Moonshine. He didn't go home until the next morning where he got into a fight with his dad. Apparently, his dad hit him in the chest and his heart busted; he died instantly. Shirley went to Chuck’s funeral and his mother blame her because she thought Shirley treated Chuck badly. Shirley really loved Chuck but he liked to drink - I think she picked the better of the two.

My Family: Chapter 39

It got so bad living with my parents, I moved out and stayed with several of my Aunts.  Aunt Hannah let me live with her and I watched her young boys.  Which reminds me of a story about my Uncle Andy.

Uncle Andy's sister, Dolly, lied to her husband, Ernie, about her age.  She was fifty years old but she told him she was thirty-five and he believed her.  He was in the service with no one around to tell him any different.  When he was discharged from the service, they packed up and moved back to the hollow. They were only home about three months when someone let it slipped how old Dolly really was, Ernie divorced her. Dolly loved him until the day she died. Ernie got married again within a year after his divorce. 

Aunt Hannah lived in an apartment in which she had torn the wall down between two existing apartments to make one large one for her family. Since it’s over a dance hall, the boys have no place to play and Aunt Hannah wants me to keep them outside all the time. 

This is how I spent my days: after breakfast, Aunt Hannah would ask me to take the boys outside and keep them until lunch. Then after lunch, they would take a nap (not for very long cause Uncle Andy had a big mouth) and I‘m to take them out again until dinner. I to entertain three boys who are two, three, and four years old with nothing to play with but one swing. I never took any toys outside because I would had to carried them back up fifteen steps. This was not a fun job and I wasn’t very happy.

Poodie, Steven, Rick and Butch, Dolly's house in background

Until I met Irene; she and I become fast friends. She was a widow with three children and her husband had just been killed in a mining accident a year earlier. She had a baby who was only eight months old and two girls; five and three. She lived a couple of houses down from Hannah and I would take the boys down to her place so the boys could play with her girls. There was a creek at the end of her row of homes but her yard had a fence around it. One day, I left the boys in the yard and told the oldest, Butch, to watch the other two. As I went into the house, I gave them strict instructions to stay in the yard. Irene was hanging curtains so I helped her; forgetting to check on the boys. When Irene’s girls came into the house, I asked where the boys were. They said they didn’t know. I ran outside, sure enough the yard was empty. Panicking, I searched the yard and surrounding areas but didn’t think to search for them down by the creek. When I couldn’t find them, I thought maybe they went home. I ran up to the apartment and asked Aunt Hannah if the boys came home. She took one look at me and said, “Lord Poodie, if you have lost my boys; I am going to kill you.” I said a quick “No, I know where they are at. Don’t worry I’m going to go and get them back.” I took off running down the steps and back to Irene’s. As I passed by an alley, I saw the boys. They were all soaking wet. I took a hold of Butch to shake and holler at him. He began to cry and said it wasn’t his fault, Rick went down to the creek. Steve and Butch had followed Rick to the creek where Steve fell in.  Butch and Steve jumped in save Steve. They were black as a lump of coal from the coal dust that’s in the creek. I had to tell Aunt Hannah what happen as she could see us standing in the alley from her apartment window anyway. She had to throw their clothes they were wearing away; she couldn’t get them clean. I was a very lucky girl that day that those boys didn’t drown. At the bottom of the creek it’s like quick sand, although the creek itself isn’t high, there is at least two to three feet of coal dust on the bottom. In the creek in front of our house up Rum Creek, I once sank up to my knees in the coal dust and my girlfriend had to help me out. 

My Family: Chapter 38

Remember I mentioned a boy giving me a ride on his back when I was in first grade, well, when I went into the tenth grade he was one of my teachers. The first day of school he pulled me aside and asked me not to call him by his name but to call him by his sire name and put a Mr. in front it. We had our first test of the year coming up and I took the day off - my first day in two years of high school because mom didn’t wake me up in time to catch the school bus. When I went back to school the next day, Mr. teacher was reading out what everyone’s grade was on the test. I got a “D” and the class spoke up and asked how I could get a “D” when I wasn’t there to take the test. I didn’t even know the class would miss me, I never spoke to any of them and if they spoke to me I just turn my head.

The boys were the biggest pests, they would pull my hair, throw paper balls at me, or tell on me for chewing gum in class. Telling on me for chewing gum was the straw that broke the camel’s back because when the teacher told me to throw it away, that gum had lasted me a whole week and God only knew when I would get another stick, I stuck it to my bed post every night before I went to sleep if I forgot and fell asleep with it in my mouth I would have cut it out of my hair the next morning. I stood in front of the whole class and told the the boys what I thought of them - I had no friends in high school.

I dropped out of school after the first half of tenth grade; I was 16 years old.  I didn't have any lunch or clothes to wear and it was getting harder for me to steal Shirley's shoes; she was hiding them better or maybe she was sleeping with them. I just know I couldn't find them anymore; she said if I wore her shoes she couldn’t wear them anymore because I turned the heel. She would wait for me at the bus drop-off to get them back and if I didn’t run she would beat me up.  I didn't have any books to study from, in West Virginia you had to buy your books for school. That’s probably why a lot of children didn’t go to high school. I do know I wasn't the only one without books and had to share someone's with them, but I did no homework.

My Family: Chapter 37

My girlfriend had a male cousin who would visit them from the North. He’d go into Logan and pick up women then bring them back to her house where they would stay until the cousin got tired of them. This one night, my girlfriend and I were on her back porch and the window to one of the bedrooms was open. We could hear a woman in there with him, they were arguing. He tried to get her into bed with him but she didn’t want to go. I decided to take a peek through the curtains to see who the woman was when I saw that it was my mother! She was so drunk she could hardly stand up! I went through the window so fast they didn’t realize I was in the room until I had dragged Mom out of it.  I continued to drag her out of the house, scolding her all the way. The girlfriend’s cousin followed us, cussing and hollering at me all the way. He told me Mom owed him because she drank all his whiskey up. Finally, he grabbed a hold of one her arms and I had the other. We were fighting over her. I called him all the bad cuss words I knew while he called me bad cuss words. Then when he seen I wasn’t going to give her up, he hit me with his fist in the face. There we were on the side of the road with everyone in the hollow watching us fight over my mother when I spotted my cousin. I hollered for her to go and get her dad’s shot gun because I decided to kill him. She, however, was too afraid to get the gun. I would have shot him and she knew it. The man let mom go and ran back into the house as soon as I hollered for a gun. I yelled to him I would be back with my dad and he would kill him for me.  

My mom weight next to nothing as I dragged her home but she kept falling down so I had to pick her up and carry her - about ten houses above my girlfriend’s house. That was the first time I ever saw my mom visit my girlfriend’s house - she always could smell whiskey a mile away. Dad wasn’t home when we got there. We were sitting on the front porch when he finally came home with a bushel basket of corn - he had been out with friends stealing it. It took so long for him to come home I had calmed down and changed my mind about telling him about the man hitting me. But Mom didn’t know this and she knew if I told Dad where she had been then she would be in trouble. So as soon as Dad sat the basket down on the steps, she told him about the man hitting me. This pull the attention away from her and put it on me. Dad got real mad, he checked to make sure he had his knife on him and then we all went down to my friend’s house (my dad wasn’t drunk). 

My girlfriend’s mom grabbed me and held me back as soon as we barged through the door - Dad hadn’t knocked. She begged me to tell Dad I had lied and the cousin hadn’t hit me; she didn’t want anyone to get hurt in front of her small children. I ran outside to the back porch where the cousin had gone when he heard us come in the house. Dad had him by the front of his shirt and he was denying he hit me. I stepped in and told Dad I lied that he hadn’t hit me. My girlfriend’s mother was also pleading with Dad; saying she was had been there the whole time and hadn’t seen him hit me. Dad told the cousin he was lucky this time but if he ever found out that he really did hit me he would be back. No one ever hits his girls. The cousin was gone the next day.

My Faimly: Chapter 36

When I was 14 years old, I had a girlfriend, Karen, who lived in Dehue, she was also my cousin’s friend. One time Karen needed someone to go to a dance with her on a double date. My cousin couldn't go because she had already had a date to the dance so I was talked into going with her. I didn't want to but I went anyway - the boy who was my date had the car. My cousin and I stayed at Karen’s the night of the dance. Once there, we met up with another group of kids and they all decided they would go up a hollow they knew about. Karen came up to me and told me their plans begging me to go along, I told her I wanted the boy who brought me to take me back to her house. Boy, was he mad; I think he did 90 mph all the way home and we never said a word to each other. 

I got out of the car and went into the house and Karen’s mother said I was home early and asked where her daughter was. I gave her some excuse about not liking the boy I was with and had decided to come home, I told her Karen stayed at the dance. I watch TV with her mom until my cousin came in from her date then I told my cousin what had happen at the dance. And when Karen came home, she acted like she was drunk but I think she hadn’t drank a drop. Her eyes were all shining; we went in her bedroom and she told us all about her date including the sex part. It had been her first time. Karen ended up getting married and having a child by the time she was 16 years old.

My Family: Chapter 35

Sometimes, after school I’d visit my girlfriend as her family was sitting down to eat dinner and if there was enough food, they’d ask me to eat with them.  If there wasn't I’d wait outside until they finished. Then I’d help do the dinner dishes so I could eat any leftover food. Sometimes there wasn't anything left, but I’d still help with dishes. My girlfriend’s dinners were like we have now, always different every day. Once I had dinner at another friend’s house and I didn't know what were eating, she told me it was meat loaf. Everyone I knew was poor but I just didn’t know it until I got into high school where I met a lot of different girls.  

I had to catch the school bus to go to school, our high school was in Logan which is fifteen miles away from our hollow. I wore Mother's orange jumper every other day to school and stole Shirley’s shoes. I must have gotten my own shoes later but I don't remember. I do remember I did go to one more year of school before I was sixteen and left. I never missed a day of school once I started high school.  One day a girl in my class asked me if I would have lunch with her and she would pay. We went to a restaurant. I was so nervous I didn't know what to order so I got the same thing as her - a tuna fish sandwich and a coke. I never had tuna fish before and was the best tasting sandwich I had ever eaten and I told her so. She wanted to take me to lunch again but I said no. She then asked me if I had supper the night before and even though I told her yes, I don't think she believed me. See, she asked me what I had for dinner and because I was embarrassed about just having beans and cornbread all the time, I made up a dinner that I read in my Health class. She said I was lying and I didn't have dinner like that. I asked her how would she know she wasn’t at my house. She never asked me what I had for supper nor does she ask me out to lunch again. 

While writing this I’ve been thinking I haven’t change very much since high school. I treated my co-workers the same as I treated my classmates - I had lunch and breaks by myself, nor did I talked to anyone. They used to call me stuck-up or say I thought I was better than them but the thing is: I was really afraid they would snub me. We didn’t eat like everyone else.  Most times I didn’t have a lunch to eat. And because we ate lot of chicken, I don’t like it now. When I was a child, we didn’t have turkey. Aunt Hannah use to say the meat was too dry to eat. I will eat a very small piece of turkey at Thanksgiving but only because it is a special day with my family. 

My Family: Chapter 34

Uncle Andy and Aunt Hannah

My Dad’s sister, Eloise, gave her daughter, Janice Sue,  to her sister, Hannah. Aunt Hannah had been married for twenty years but had no children of her own. She blamed herself because her husband, Tennie Day, had a child by his first wife. However, not too long after she took Janice in, Aunt Hannah re-met Andy Mazon. She already knew Andy well as Andy’s parents had been the neighbors of the Dillow’s at Dehue. Aunt Hannah had been 14 years old when she married Tennie Day, who was 15 years older than her. Tennie never liked to stay in one place for long, so they traveled with a circus. Aunt Hannah told fortunes until one day one of them came true and scared her. She gave it up and worked at something else.

Aunt Hannah decided to leave the circus life and came back to West Virginia. Tennie Day also left the circus but he turn into a hobo and jumped trains - that’s how he got killed. Then Aunt Hannah re-meets Andy, who was divorced from his first wife, at the restaurant where she worked. They started to date and then three months into the affair, Aunt Hannah finds out she’s going to have a baby. Andy and her get married and in the first four years they have three sons and in a few years more she has another son just not as quick. There’s about four years between the last two boys.  When Janice was about nine years old, Aunt Hannah let her go to Ohio to visit her family - only Aunt Eloise wouldn’t let her come back. I don’t think either Aunt Hannah or Janice Sue ever got over it. I know Aunt Hannah talked about it until the day she died.

My Family: Chapter 33

 Sharon lived at the end of our camp, her parent’s are the same ones who got into a fight with my parents at the picnic. We were in the same grade. She may have lived with her sister in Logan when we started high school because I don't remember her riding the school bus with me. Anyway, I remember she once took me to her sister’s apartment and that’s where I saw an electric clothes dryer and washer for the first time. I can recall she got into a big fight in Junior High which started a small war where it was hollow versus hollow. See, someone had made Sharon mad (I don't recall how it started) and she wrecked the classroom - threw books and paper all over the room. The whole class joined the fight with kids from other classrooms joining as well. Maybe it was just an excuse to cut up. I had already heard about the fight as my class was two doors down from her classroom. Principle came into our homeroom and talked to all of us. He said kids from the hollows weren’t raised right, we were “savages.” And he would jerk us up by the hair of our heads.

Poodie age 16

I went to Junior High everyday without a lunch. Because of this I would walk to Aunt Belvia’s house every day for lunch since she lived around the mountain from the school. Aunt Belvia’s husband, Noah, was a miner at the Orville coal mine and he drove by our house every day to and from work, so if I wanted a ride to Aunt Wanda’s or just to go to visit Aunt Belvia, all I had to do was stand in front of my house and flag him down as he drove by. He would always stop and give me a ride into Logan. 

This one time I spent the night with them. I slept in a small bedroom next to the bathroom, close to the mountainside. I had a bad dream that night and, while I was still asleep, I tried to open the window.  I was just getting ready to scream out the window when Uncle Noah woke me up. He said I woke him up when I opened the window. He thought I was going to climb out.  I told him I had a dream and was going to holler for my Mom.  I walked in my sleep quite a lot when I was little, Mom was forever waking me up and telling me to go back to bed. One time, I woke up on my own with my hand on the back doorknob. I had been trying to get out the door, but I think the doorknob was cold which is what woke me.  I know I’m very thankful that I didn’t make it outside that door - I’m scared of the dark.

My Family: Chapter 32

The Company always had a Fourth of July picnic for the miners up Slab Fork Hollow. They would put the watermelon in the stream which ran out of the mountain to keep it cool. This one year all the grown-ups got real drunk. There was this one couple who decided to pick a fight with my parents. The wife yelled at Dad (for what, I don’t know) and Mom got mad. She yelled back at her. And then the husband yelled at my mother which caused Dad to yell at him. The next thing you know everybody was running around a large table, the size of four tables put together, and they were throwing food at each other. All the children just stood around, stunned, as these grownups fought.

Uncle Noah’s sister was our neighbor on one side, boy, was she a bad neighbor, but then again so was my parents weren't great neighbors either. I certainly wouldn’t wanted to live next door to them. Anyway, she was a bad neighbor and When the kids from the camp would play games it would be in front of her house in the alleyway. The reason was because there was a wide spot in the alley and we could play baseball. Her yard was fenced in and when our ball went into her yard, she would not give it back. Typical old lady stuff.  We always had to find another ball or stop playing. She never had any children of her own. 

Her husband's garage was next to our fence and when my parent’s had their parties the men would park their cars in front of his garage so he couldn’t get his car out. One time he wrote in black paint across the garage doors “DO YOUR SPARKING SOME PLACE ELSE.” That didn’t help Shirley’s and my reputation. Other than the sign on the garage doors, I don’t ever remember if they ever complained to Mom and Dad about the noise or the parties. 

About this time, I had a boyfriend. He liked Shirley first but she didn’t want him so he latched onto me. I would meet him in church or at the movies, let him walk me home, and kiss me good night. All he wanted to do was sing country songs and kiss. When we sat together at the movies, I would have to buy a soda and put the straw in my mouth so he couldn’t kiss me. I never took it out of my mouth until the movie was over. I would always pay my own way in the movies and, can you believe the gall, his sister had the nerve to say I was only using him. I told her sure that’s why I paid my own way to the movies. He couldn’t even afford to pay the fifteen cents for me to go to the show. 

Well, he joined the Army and while there I wrote him a “Dear John” letter. When he got out of the service, he came up to the house and asked for all of his pictures back. And if I would go to the caravel in Logan with him that his stepbrother would drive us. I said that I would go, It was the worse mistake of my life. When he picked me up Shirley’s boyfriend, Dave, called from the porch to be home early and not to do anything he wouldn’t do. Dave was just trying to embarrassed me because it was my first date going anywhere with a boy. But I wish he had hit me over the head and made me stay home.

My date was all hands, I had to fight him off all night and it was worse when we were in the car with his brother. When I first got in the car, his brother made the comment he wished I was his date, and by the end of the evening, I wished I was his date, too.  When his brother stopped in front of my house, I got out of the car fast, and said goodbye. That was the end of that boyfriend. 

Once this one woman from Dabney came up to our house and stood by the gate; she did not come into our yard, but yelled at me, calling me a whore and other names. When my neighbor heard her, she came over and told her to leave. My neighbor told the women she was talking to a baby and it wasn’t my fault if she couldn’t keep her husband home. My parents weren't home at the time or this woman wouldn't have called me names. Later, after Shirley’s oldest daughter grew up and moved to Ohio,  she married this same woman’s son. Small world, huh? 

My Family: Chapter 31

Alone the railroad tracks in back of house

Shirley thought that if Dad hadn’t stop to talk to her as he went through the house to the back porch that Mom and Dad would have come face to face. As it was we followed Dad around the house and to watched him shoot at Mom. She was heading up the railroad tracks. Mom had made it about four houses up the along the tracks when Dad took aim and fired the shotgun. He shot at her twice and missed both shots. Mom fell as she got off of the tracks. We were sure Dad thought he killed her. We stood on the back porch and watched as he went up to the tracks and looked for her in the tall grass. Mom said later that it was her falling that saved her life. She had lain there until he stopped shooting then she got up and ran again. She said she heard the bullet pass right over her head.

And Mom did come back about two weeks later and, boy, did she come back drunk and mad. Our bed was up against a window and, in the middle of the night, she woke all of us by breaking every windowpane in the house with her fist. As she did so, she yelled for Dad to open the door and give her the babies, Bonnie and Ronnie. Dad came into our room, took Bonnie and Ronnie out of bed. Mom then changed tactics and yelled for one of us to let her in the house. As Dad left the room he dared any of us let her in the house then ran out the front door while Mom broke the glass out of the back door. Later we found out that he took Bonnie and Ronnie four houses above ours to the neighbor's house.

She finally broke the window out of the back door,  unlock it, and came to our room after going into Dad’s first. We had glass all over our bed because she broke every pane of glass in the window beside our bed. My girlfriend was sleeping over at time, too. Mom asked all of us why we didn't unlock the door for her. We told her  Dad told us not to. She then asked where he went and we when told her we didn't know so she left and we went back to sleep.

We didn't see her again for a month. Dad had all the glass put back in the house, I really don't know what excuse he gave the Company for them being broken. Dad went and got Mom to come back home. She said he told her he was starving to death. She made him get rid of all his guns first, but nothing changed; they still got drunk and fought every weekend. And Mom was still seeing Bert.

Shirley and I worked at Bert’s hotdog stand during the summer and sold hotdogs and ice cream. I remember once a  guy stopped by and asked me to make him a milkshake. I told him I didn’t know how, I had never heard of a milkshake before. He told me how to make it.

Bert eventually ended up back in prison for killing a man at the hotdog stand. I believe it had something to do with Mom and Dad. I don’t know the whole story, I was very sick in bed. Mom told me the deputy’s had been to the house and had search it. They even looked under my bed while I was sleeping with my mouth open (now to a thirteen year old this is terrible news, especially since I also had the slop jar under my side of the bed). Mom said Bert had killed a man last night and they believe he was hiding in the mountains. But Bert gave himself up and went to prison. He got out of prison about ten years later, he died about a year after he was home.

My Family: Chapter 30

Dad found out about Bert. He came home one Sunday and Mom was at church. He asked us a lot of questions and we would never lie to him. He would kill us if we did. Lucille got very upset and afraid under his questioning. So, she told him she’d seen Bert and Mom hugging while she was suppose to be asleep in the back seat of the car when Bert was driving her and Mom home from church.
 
When Bert finally dropped Mom off at home after church, Dad was waiting on the front porch with a shotgun. Before she even got out of the car, he took aim and was going to shoot her. I was standing behind him and just as he raised the gun,I reached for his arm and pulled it down. All the kids were crying and upset. Mom had just gotten one leg out of the car when she looked up and had seen Dad with the gun. She slammed the car door quick, Bert and her took off. Dad left the house after that and we didn’t see him until the next day. 

Mom had no where to go. Her mother was in Kentucky, living with her brother and taking care of his wife who was dying. Grandma Francis told me much later that Mom had come to Kentucky to ask to stay with her, but Grandma Francis told Mom she could stay only one night then she would have to leave. My guess is she went to stay with her uncle, Bert’s parents, who also lived in Kentucky. 
 
Mom came home one day while Shirley was at the store and stole Bonnie Sue. Dad was mad at Shirley; as if she could have stopped Mom from taking her baby. Mom took Bonnie to Aunt Belvia’s and left her there. When Dad found out he went to Aunt Belva’s and got her back.

Mom sued Dad for a divorce and was at the house when they delivered the papers. Dad’s niece, Sue, was also at our house at the same time. She and Mom sat in the kitchen talking and joking about what Dad would do when he came home and saw the papers. They guessed Dad would just try and shoot Mom again. They both laughed at this and by the time Dad came home from work Sue had left.  

When Dad saw Mom at the table, he asked Mom where his shotgun was and to get it for him, so she went and got it for him. He then told Shirley and I to take the babies and leave the house. Shirley said no and picked up Bonnie. Mom took off running out the kitchen door and Dad told Shirley again to get the baby and go. Shirley still said no. She told him if he was going to kill her mother, she’s going to watch and be a witness. Dad realized that Shirley wasn’t going to leave so he took off out the kitchen door after Mom. 

Shirley and I followed right behind Dad. I had Ronnie by the hand and Lucille was beside me while Shirley still had Bonnie. We had just skidded out into the yard when we spotted her. Mom had gone around the backside of the house and was running up the railroad tracks. Dad lifted the gun to his shoulder and took aim.