My Family: Chapter 56

Sonny went into the Army but didn’t like very much and wanted to get out - he was 18 years old. While on leave he went to visit Uncle Vondon in North Carolina where my sister, Lucille, was living at the time. One day, they were outside talking while Sonny cleaned his gun when he got the idea that if Lucille shot him in the foot he would get discharged. Well, Lucille didn't want to shoot him, but he persisted by saying he was going to say that it was an accident and he shot himself while he was cleaning his gun. She kept telling him no, but he finally talked her into shooting him. Uncle Vondon heard the shot and ran out of the house. Sonny told him it was an accident but I don’t think Uncle Vondon believed their story. However it must have worked on the Army because they give him a discharge. I really think it was his heart which got him out of the service. By the time he was 21 he had a pacemaker put in, and he died at the age of 49.

This is one of my weekends at home and why I didn’t stay at home among other things. Dad and Mom had left me to take care of Bonnie and Ronnie on Friday while they went to spend the weekend with friends to drink and party. On Sunday night they came home drunk as usual and I had to helped get them to bed. I put them in the same bed in our old room because it had two double beds and the only fireplace which had bricks around the hearth to keep the fire from falling on the wood floors. I had to go outside and get more coal to put on the fire so I took Bonnie and Ronnie with me. While we were outside, I heard Mom screamed - I was already upset and jumpy from getting them to bed. So I ran into the house to see what is going on. Dad was in front of the fireplace calling Mom names and throwing bricks from the fireplace at her. Mom screamed and dodged the bricks. I yelled at him and asked him if he was crazy. He told me he was going to kill Mom because she wouldn’t let him touch her. I told them both I was leaving and they could kill each other for all I cared. Dad got in the other bed and I put all the bricks back around the fireplace. I took Bonnie and Ronnie over to stay with Grandma Francis while I went to stay with Aunt Wanda in Man.  I’m 17 years old, Mom is 37 years old while Dad is 39 years old - they acted younger than I did.

My Family: Chapter 11

After we moved to Macbeth, Shirley and I made friends with the kids at the bottom of the hollow. They played in the cemetery.

Graveyard up Rum creek

They got cardboard boxes and slid down the hill. Sonny must have been with us, I just don't remember him too much except for he slept at the foot of my bed and lived in the same house as I did. I claimed him as a brother and he claimed us as his family, but he had his own set of friends and we had ours. I think the reason I don't remember too much about him has a lot to do with him being a boy. He was such a good son, never got into any trouble - I think he was a little bit afraid of Dad. I feel sorry for him because he really loved his birth mother but you could count on one hand how many times she came to see him the whole time we had him. And when she did come, he would hang on her hugging her but she would push him away. My parents gave us love and attention in their way but not by hugs and kisses. Dad gave us love by playing with us when ever he could or was home and he told everyone he had the prettiest daughters.

Small Church in Logan, WV.

Macbeth hollow had a Presbyterian church, but we belonged to the Church of God, which is a Pentecostal denomination. Mom didn’t care if Shirley and I went to Sunday school there but she wouldn't go. We went every Sunday. One Sunday, they were giving away little Bibles and we wanted one, but in order to get a Bible you had to be baptized. So we got baptized and they gave us each a Bible. When Mom heard we got baptized she got so mad that she gave us a whooping and took the Bibles away from us. She took the Bibles back to the minister and told him that he didn’t have the right to baptized us without her permission, that she didn’t believe in his church, and that we wouldn’t be coming back. We never went back again.

Remember how isolated Mom felt living at Macbeth? It really was lonesome. I remember this one time an old woman who lived by herself in the last house up Macbeth got bit by a rattlesnake. It was a while before she got any help. I can still see them carrying her out of the hollow. I don’t remember if she died. Still, Mom nagged Dad to get her out of Macbeth. I forgot how bad Mom nagged; you would do anything just to shut her up. I can remember sitting out on the front steps listening to Mom cry, and she cried a lot while we lived up Macbeth hollow. Mostly because Dad was gone so much and she was left to take care of the children.

Grandma Dillow died of cancer while we lived up Macbeth. I was ten years old and had just gotten over the mumps. Dr.Vaughn said it was the first case of mumps he had seen in years. I was lucky and wasn't that sick - I had them only on one side. Shirley wasn't so lucky, she had them on both sides and still had to go to Grandma Dillow's funeral - she was very sick. Do you recall I mentioned that the family sits up with their dead for two or three nights before they bury them? Well, one night while the family sat up with Grandma Dillow, Grandma sat straight up in her casket! The next morning, my aunts and uncles were too excited to listen to the funeral director as he tried to explain the reason to them.

Wasn’t long after Grandma Dillow's funeral, Dad came home from work and told Mom there was a family who wanted to trade homes with us. A man had approached Dad and told him his wife wanted to move, he thought she would feel better up Macbeth as it would get her away from people. The main reason was her father was a bootlegger. West Virginia is a dry state that means that you can only buy whiskey in a state store and not on weekends. And although her father had stopped selling whiskey, people were still coming to the house all night long. She had two small boys, so her husband thought it would make her happy to move away from the people that kept coming to the house. The family had lived in the house for years. The wife's brother and her were born in the house and her father did many improvements. He had added a bathhouse and put in hot and cold running water. We traded homes but we got the best of the deal because we got a sink with a cabinet above it, hot and cold water in the kitchen, and a bathhouse with two showers.

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.