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.