My Family: Chapter 65

The reason I broke off with Charles was because I didn’t love him and I thought he should find someone that did.  Charles was such a sweet, innocent person. He began to drink after I broke off with him and he would complain to my parents and cousin, Tommy; I lost Tommy friendship over it.  Later after I moved away and would come home to visit my parents, they would tell Charles I was there and he would come over to see me. 

This one time when I came home, I was married and had my oldest daughter.   Charles came over to see me, and my husband got very upset but he couldn’t say anything because it wasn’t his house.  He just walked out of the room and Charles asked me if I was happy, and if I wasn't he would be glad to take me back, I could bring the baby and he would treat her like his own. He said he still had my ring. I told him I was very happy, and he didn’t come back to visit after that.  When I next heard about him, he had gotten married.  My parents found him another girlfriend, it was a lady they paled around with and she was older than Charles, they later got married and had a son.

Even though we had moved away, the hollow and it's ghosts still found me.  I was working in a 5&10 cent store (to make more money) when a customer said that she knew me.  She said wasn't I that girl who used to live across the street from her who's parents fought all the time. I was so embarrassed, this customer said this in front of a line of other customers.  Mom and Dad were still the same in Ohio as they had been on the hollow - drinking and fighting on the weekends but this time it was a little different someone would call the police when they got too loud.  When we first moved into the apartment, my parent's went out to a bar where Mom got into a fight with another woman.   The police were called and they put her in jail. She had to spend a week in jail because neither Dad nor I had the money to get her out.  Eventually, Dad did get the money from somewhere and got her out of jail. I never asked him about, Mom was home and that's all I cared about.

Uncle Vondon sent Lucille home while we still lived on Monroe, we had to move from the second floor apartment to the first floor in order to have more room.  One night while Lucille and I were sleeping, we heard a noise at the window in the bedroom. Someone was pounding on the window to get us to answer the door. Since Lucille was next to the window she parted the curtains and peeked out.  She said the milkman was banging on the window.  Milkman? I took a peek out the window,  it wasn't the milkman it was two policemen.  They yelled through the window that they had a report of a fight at our address. We said not at our house and we sent them over to where Bob and Gina lived behind us because we figured it was Mom and Dad since they spent most of the weekends drinking at Bob and Gina's.  Dad later told me it was the couple who own the other half of the house where we had our apartment. Our apartment house was a double house with one side made into apartment and the other side where just one family live.

My Family: Chapter 64

One day Dad and I went shopping in Columbus, I didn’t want to spend money for the bus so we walked. It was only two or three blocks and I brought everyone some clothes with the money I got back from income tax. I never had a pair of high heel shoes so I brought myself a pair and decided to wear them back home.

 The house we moved to on Main St.
 Mom, Dave holding Liz

As Dad and I were walking along Main Street, I had to hold on to Dad to keep from falling. I kept turning my ankles and walking on the sides of the shoes. Dad told me if I didn’t take the shoes off I was going to break my neck.  I took the shoes off and walked home barefooted.

      While they were living in Columbus, I paid all of my parent’s bills: rent, electric, and phone. They were suppose to buy the food, but I don’t know if they did or not because I never looked for food - I didn’t eat at home.  I ate a bag of chips at the drugstore (there was a soda shop in the drugstore) where I spent most of my non-working hours sitting at the counter reading.

            On Monroe Street behind us lived Mom and Dad’s drinking friends, Bob and Gina from the hollow.  This meant my parents picked up where they left off; getting drunk every day and fighting on the weekends. When Gladys and Bill left Ohio to go to Michigan, Mom took it very hard. She would cry all the time to go back to the hollow.  Dad and I had a hard time talking her into staying in Ohio.  The only reason she stayed was because she had no place to go back too.

Shirley, Mom holding Liz

We moved farther down on Main St. to a house that had four bedrooms and was fully furnish with a rent which cost about the same. Shirley and David came to Columbus and moved in with us by this time they had a baby, Liz. When David got a job, he took over paying the electric bill.  I still found a way to stay away from home as much as I could. I would walk down to the theater after work which stayed open all night and spent the night watching the same movie over and over.

Dad had made a friend at work and brought him home to met me. I liked him very much. The three of us went everywhere together his name was Charles and Dad liked him, too. Dad said he was a good OLE boy from West Virginia. Charles was just a couple of years older than me.  He had a '55 Chevy which is what I liked best about him. To me he was just a friend who let me have his car to drive around while he was at work and I would pick him up when it was time for him to come home.  Charlies' foreman would come outside and walk along the docks until Charles came out of work and got in the car.  I didn’t pay the foreman any mind until one day Charles said to me that the foreman was giving him a hard time.  When I asked him why he said the foreman was mad because I didn’t pay him any attention and took his anger out on Charles. He was about the same age as Charles and he told Charles he didn’t understand why I would choose Charles over him.  See he had asked my father’s permission to ask me out and sent me a message with Dad. I told dad to tell him to forget it.  However, I didn’t realize he was Charles' foreman. From then on when I picked Charles up from work, the foreman still would walk the docks but I still ignored him. I didn’t want any boyfriend.  

I went with Charles to meet his parents in Parkersburg, West Virginia to stay the weekend. His family lived on a farm and I slept in the same room with his two younger sisters. His brother was single also but he looked like he was a lot older then Charles. The farm was going to belong to his brother when his parents passed.   Charles had asked me to married him and I thought why not, I enjoyed his friendship and we had been friends for over a year.  The first and only time we kissed was when Charles gave me a ring up until then Charles made no move to kiss me - he was very shy.

So I didn’t know how much he loved me until I broke our engagement and gave back his ring.

My Family: Chapter 60

David, me, Mom with a friend, and Dad

Dad and Mom met a new drinking couple, one weekend they decided to take both families on a picnic where Dad’s friend had a motor boat and were taking turns with it in the river but no one would ride with Dad so I said I would. Mom threw a fit and begged Dad not to take me out but he promised he wouldn't let anything happen to me. Well, he almost turned us over while Mom ran alone side the river blank; screaming for Dad to get out of the water.  After that he did bring the boat to shore because none of us could swim.  I went back to live at Aunt Hannah's to stay. 

I was 17 years old now. Dad and Mom had taken in a border and I didn't want to stay at home any more. One day, one of the waitress who worked for Aunt Hannah at the dance hall sent word there was a girl and her husband looking for me (it was my girlfriend from school). By the time I got to the dance hall they had gotten into a car and drove away. I went in and asked if my girlfriend had left me a message and the waitress said “no” because they had been there a long time. Which is why the waitress sent for me, they wanted to get them out of the dance hall. The waitress said they finally had to ask them to leave. See, my girlfriend had gotten jealous of another woman and hit her over the head with a beer bottle. I was sorry I missed them; I hadn’t seen my girlfriend in nearly two years. 

 Shirley, David, and me

I hadn’t been home for almost a year, so I didn’t know my parents had moved to Columbus, Ohio until Dad came for me a week before Christmas. He and Aunt Hannah got into an argument over me, she didn’t want me to leave and he was telling her he wasn’t leaving without me because I was old enough now to get a job and help him and Mom. Dad and Mom were now living with Aunt Eloise and her family. Mom and I got a job at the same place, Beverly Drive-In, she was a waitress inside and I was a car-hop outside. However, Mom quit after three days but I stayed there making twenty dollars a week for a year and half. Dad worked at the Ohio Wire Co which was where Aunt Eloise’s sons worked.

Alma Jean Dillow

My Family: Chapter 9

Shirley and I still had to go to school the day we found out our baby brother died. Our neighbor, Mrs. Childers, was there and she told Dad it would better if we went to school. She sent us over to her house to walk with her children - she had twenty in all.  We had to pass the graveyard on the way to school and we could see the pile of dirt as they were were digging his grave.  We passed his grave every day on our way school. Later I learned that Doctor Vaughn had given Dad a terrible choice; Mom or the baby (the doctor always gave the husband the choice). When a baby is born at home and the doctor can only save one he would used forceps to deliver the baby and most times break the baby's neck.  I guess that if Dad took the baby’s life over Mom's then the doctor would have cut the baby out. I can tell you it was tough on Dad, he wanted a boy in the worse way and he took that baby’s death very hard. He's whole family knew it. As tough as it was on Dad it almost killed Mom.

Aunt Wanda

I want to talk a little about my Aunt Eloise, Dad's sister. She married a man who didn't want to work and make a living for his family.  He didn't live with her, so she had to live off Welfare.  He would come home stay, for awhile, but when she got pregnant he would leave again until she had the baby then he would come back and do the same thing all over again.  My Aunt Wanda, Dad's other sister, also lived off Welfare.  Her husband had just left her with two small sons.  She lived with Aunt Eloise and they put their money together to feed nine children.   Aunt Eloise had a hard time raising her children on Welfare and she wouldn't consider adopting her children out, unlike my Aunt Alice.  However, she was desperate so she lent her children to her siblings (for one reason or another) and in return they would help her to feed, cloth, and give them the love. Before she died, she had all her children back with her. She died at the age of 43 from cancer.

Abby age 1

One day not long after our baby brother died, Dad came home with a little boy about two and half years old. We were all so excited and asked if we could keep him. Dad said he was ours and his name was Abby. He was actually Aunt Eloise's son.  Mom even told Dad that Aunt Eloise wasn't going to let him keep the child, but Dad was sure she would. Aunt Eloise had five sons and she had trouble feeding them all that's why she didn't say anything when he stole one of her boys. She let him keep Abby for awhile. I remember Mom went to the store and brought boy baby clothes because Dad didn't bring any clothes with the baby.  Eventually, when Aunt Eloise came to get Abby, Dad didn't want to give him back, but she told Dad that she missed Abby.  However, she felt sorry for Dad and told him could have the baby that she was carrying - if it was a boy.  Dad kept a close eye on her to make sure he would know when the baby came and he made sure the family knew that this baby was his - if it was a boy.  Aunt Eloise delivered a little girl and Aunt Hannah took her to live with her because she didn't have any children after twenty years of marriage. So Dad had to wait another year.

Aunt Eloise

Sure enough Aunt Eloise delivered a boy and named him Ronald Darrell (Ronald after our baby brother).  Mom picked him up and went to Logan to register him at the court house.  I have to tell you that there was no child on earth more loved and wanted than Ronnie.  So that is how Ronnie came to live with us when he was a few days old. He was spoiled too. I remember how he like to bang on the coal bucket with the poker to make music. How he sometimes bang on us but we were not allowed to hit him. Once, I snuck him outside and rubbed dirt all over him just to see what he look like dirty. Mom was so made and hollered who did this to her poor little baby.  Of course, I wasn't about to say me and Ronnie probably told her anyway.

My Family: Chapter 7

Once in a while, Mom would give us sweet milk and cornbread as a treat for supper,it was the milk that was the treat. We would have nothing else and there were never forks on the table, we ate with a spoon. Dad might have eaten with a fork on a Sunday but I only ever remember seeing him eat with a spoon. Mom was forever telling me to stop raking my teeth across the spoon. Every day, on a weekday, for breakfast we would have: gravy, eggs, biscuits, jelly, Karo syrup, and apple butter. For supper we had: soup beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread. On Sundays we might have fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread (during the summer she would add corn, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, and noodles). Sometimes we have canned tomatoes with noodles which had sugar in them. In the summer, we go with Mom (taking a knife and a poke) to the mountain to hunt for poke greens for our supper. Our diet never varied, this was all the food we ever ate. This one time mom had choose which chicken she wanted for dinner, she caught it by the neck and was ringing its neck when she felt it break she let go so it would flop around, instead the chicken got up and run under the house, mom was surprise  she said that she could have swore that she felt its neck break she said that she wasn't going after it because it was meant to live so she picked another chicken
 we told her that she was wasting her time that we wouldn't eat any of it after watching her kill it, she got mad and said it was all in our head. About two weeks later the chicken came out from under the house and it walk with a crooked head and die of old age.
 We ate and spoke differently then the North does, here are some words that we used: A butter knife was called a case knife, a bag was called a poke, and soda is called pop.

Poodie (me) age 8

Here I am at about eight years old and things haven’t change much at home, Dad still drank and worked the Hoot Owl shift. Mom joined the church so she doesn't drink anymore, but they still fight. I heard Mom tell Dad as soon as her girls were old enough to take care of themselves, she was going to pay him back for every wrong he was doing her.  I tell you it was wonderful not to have her drinking, but I heard her cry a lot when Dad would leave on Friday after work and we wouldn't see him again until Sunday night.
 
Dad's niece and her family lived in front of us on the other side of the railroad tracks next to the main road.  They lived next door to a lady that every one knew was crazy.  She would come out of her house cussing and saying she was going to dig a grave.  One time while I had been over at my cousin's house playing, she and I met on the railroad tracks (I just happened to leave my cousin’s house at the same time as she left her house) she had a garden pick in her hands and this time it was her husband’s grave she was going to dig.  I got scared and ran home screaming, I made it to the front door and fell in.  Dad picked me up and asked what was wrong,  I told him the crazy lady was going to get me. He said to stay out of her way and we watched her go up the railroad tracks, all the while hitting the ground with the pick and cussing. There was a salesman at our house that day, he was trying to sell mom a sewing machine.  He asked Dad if someone was going to do anything. Dad said no and said her husband would take care of her as soon as he came home.

Mom bought the sewing machine but as soon as she put the needle through her finger, she got rid of it. Dad's niece took the sewing machine and finish paying for it. Mom sew by hand, making us dresses out of the flour and corn meal bags.

It was about this time that the neighbor, next door to my cousin's, shot and killed his wife. They were a black couple who had been drinking and got in a fight. He chased her around the outside of the house with a gun and shot her. He was gone about five years and after he came home, he never drank another drop of whiskey. His house and job were still waiting for him when he came home.

My Family: Chapter 4

One day after we had moved to Macbeth, I can remember Mom took Lucille and me and walked to Orville to the Company store for food (about one mile). She had some scrip left over from Orville so she couldn't spend anywhere but at that store. A man she knew drove by, he stopped and asked her if she wanted a lift but since we were almost at the store Mom said no. Then he asked her if Lucille and I were her daughters and when she said yes, he replied that she didn’t look old enough to have daughters our age (what an old line). No one stopped us on our way home. I was about 5 1/2 and Lucille was about 2 1/2. Mom carried Lucille with a bag of food most of the way while I carried a light bag, and we stopped to rest some of the way home. By the end of our long walk both Lucille and I were crying.

Coal being brought out of the mine

At Macbeth, Dad drove the cars which hauled the coal out of the mines.  The cars would be connected together to look like a train so it also ran on rails and had a cable that the cars were hooked to. He never got hurt again in the mines after he started to work for Hutchinson Coal Company.

Finally when I am six years old, I got to go to school and I can't wait to learn how to read books. I remember Mom took us on the bus to Logan and I tried to read all the signs as we would pass them.  We came home with a lot five cent toys that she bought at the 5 & 10 cent store for us. I hated school once I found out that I had to walk a mile every day, Shirley had to walk with me.  She hit me because I would cry and throw up - crying made me throw up.  I cried everyday and everyday I went home to beg Dad to buy a car. He only laughed at me and tell Mom how smart I was and I was going to be a genius in school.  I repeated the first grade. Shirley complained I embarrassed her in front of the other kids on the walk home. To get away from the other kids, Shirley would make us walk the railroad tracks and I cried all the more.  There were a lot of kids who walked home who lived in the lower part of Macbeth (Hutchinson) - we lived in the upper half. Shirley had friends which she wanted to walk home with, so we didn't walk the tracks every day only when she wanted to punish me. When we moved back to Macbeth (Hutchinson), Shirley met this girl who lived a couple of houses away from us, she was in a grade lower.  So when we started school, Shirley dropped back one grade to be in the same class with her.

Dehue School

One day when I was crying on our way home and Shirley was hollering at me as usual, this eighth grade boy (he was in his last year at Dehue and he had a brother in my class) felt sorry for me so he picked me up and carried me on his back until we got to his house.  Even then I still had a long way to walk.

Shirley once told me that I was adopted, we were standing out in front of our house by the gate and I cried because I didn’t want to be adopted. She told me to stop crying that she was just joking with me that I wasn’t adopted. She said hateful things to me just to get me to cry.

Dad and Mom were good people to have around when someone needed help. There was this one time when I was seven years old, a blind man and his daughter came to our house to beg for food. He was gave Dad this sad story about his life, how he and his wife had no place to live, and how he waited for his son to come home from the war.  Dad invited him and his family to move in with us. The man said he had to go get his wife and he would come back; his daughter was about fifteen.  They stayed for a long while. 

Shirley (age 10) and Mom (age 28)

I don’t remember how long, I remember that when they left the blind man was striking out at his daughter with his cane because she cried that she didn’t want to leave. We lived in a three-room house at that time so I don’t remember where they slept.  Grandma Francis had just moved out, she went to Kentucky to live with her brother and take care of his wife because she had cancer.

    

My Family: Chapter 2

Orville, West Virginia

My younger sister, Lucille, was born in Orville when I was two years and six month old. Where we lived, there was two rows of homes and in between the homes was a dirt road which was called an alley. The back of our house set up against this alley, it was used for delivery trucks. At the front of our house was a hill, at top was the main road which we call a hard road because it was paved with blacktop. This one time a salesman stopped at the house and was trying to sale a tricycle to Mom, I was ridding the tricycle while he was trying to talk Mom into buying it. She didn’t because cost too much. The tricycle was three dollars.

After Lucille was born, we moved next to the railroad tracks in a four-room house. Mom named Lucille after the lady who lived next door to us who were drinking buddies of my parents on the weekends. Mom and Dad would start to drink on a Friday evening and not stop until Sunday night. My parents would fight and drink most of the time on the weekends only.

Mom and Lucille

I remember this one night, when I was four years old, that we sat on the back porch and screamed for hours because we were alone in the house. Someone did come and hush us up; putting us to bed. Our bed was pushed up against the window of our bedroom. If we did go to bed early on Saturday night, some times I would get woken up by Mom or Dad stepping on me trying to climb threw the window. One night, Dad woke me up as he tried to get out the window, Mom was behind him in the doorway with an cast-iron clothes iron. One was always trying to get away from the other but mostly Mom getting away from Dad.

You didn't mess with my Mom, she would whop you in a heartbeat.  Once Mom got into an argument with our neighbor on the other side. The neighbor's husband was a drinker also so it probable had something to do with her husband drinking at our house. Everyone had a slop jar to use at night instead of going out to the outhouse after dark for fear of snakes or other animals. As the woman came around the corner of our house, Mom was standing on the porch waiting for her - it was late at night. I was in the doorway watching. Mom threw the contents of the slop jar in her face, as it went all over her there was a lot of screaming between the two but the woman didn't come any farther than the corner of the house.

end of homes in Orville

The neighbors couldn’t call the police and get them to come out and settle a disturbance since there was no law up any of the hollows. The nearest police was in Logan and that was twenty miles away. No one had a phone (phones at that time were not affordable) and Logan only had a sheriff. If there was a Constable that lived close by, they did not interfere for fear of my dad. 
Dad didn’t drink during the week and never miss a day’s work. I don’t remember my father ever taking a day off from work unless he got hurt in the mines. The miners risked their lives every time they go down in a cave. You never hear about the small cave-ins where only one or two would get hurt, because it was expected with the job. My father was forevermore having his bones broken. He had his neck, back, legs, and arms broken at different times. Someone was always throwing his miners clothes on the front porch; telling Mom he was in the hospital in Logan. His job was to put the timber to hold the cave up and sometimes accidents do happen. My fondest memory is when Dad was in bed with a broken leg and Shirley had carried home the measles. She gave them to Lucille and myself, so we all were sick (except for my mom) and laying in bed with my dad. Mom carried us scrambled egg with bologna sandwiches to eat. These were cheap sandwiches since the eggs came from our chickens and dad had the bologna for his lunches. Food wasn't a peculiar of ours.

We never had much food to eat. In my part of the south don't count on getting an offer of  food or drink when you visit someone. It's just not happening unless it's dinner time, then you will get invited to set down and eat but you are expected to have the manners to say 'no thank you, I was just leaving.'

My sister, Shirley, was the baby for three years before I was born. She didn't like me at all and she was spoiled. When my Mom gave us toys, she expected us to share but Shirley would claim everything as hers, so that's why I didn't have any toys to call my own. And if I did get toys, I don’t remember they lasted long. I was tough on everything according to Shirley which is why she didn’t let me touch anything that belonged to her. At six years old, Shirley went to school at Cham about a mile up the hollow from Orville in a two room school house that went to the fourth grade. I wanted to go to school real bad, so I decided to follow Shirley. She would walk along the roadway and I walked along the railroad tracks. She was dressed for school but I only had on underwear. The underwear at that time was a t-shirt and panties connected with buttons down the front and a split in the back at waist high (just like the one on the left).

We got to school about the same time. I don't know how the teacher let Mom know that I was there, because we had no telephone or a car. But I got to stay at school until Mom picked me up and after a spanking, I got the idea that I wasn't allowed to go to school. I stayed at home and played with Shirley's toys and when she came home from school she would beat me up if  I was still playing with her things. She had everything a little girl would want; doll, table, chairs, and dishes. I always tried to have everything put away by the time she would get home but sometimes she would catch me. Mom would always holler at her and tell her she had to share. My big toe nail is still cracked down the middle where she hit me with a hammer for touching her toys when she was playing with them.

Me and Shirley Ann

The only reason that I know how my toenail got cracked is she told me this is what happened after we got older in our teens. She once tried to get me to eat lye while Mom was washing clothes. Mom washed clothes in two big tubs with a scrub broad, she had to build two fires out in the yard and put a tub on each fire. One was for wash and the other one was to rinse the clothes in, she used homemade soap that she made with lye. It had cross-bones on the can, and Mom had set the can down on the porch with a spoon in it and Shirley tried to get me to take a taste. But I wouldn't, and I don't know who's idea it was, but we tried to get Lucille to taste it. We wasn’t trying to hurt her but we knew it was something that we shouldn’t be eating. At first, Lucille wouldn't take a taste but then I pretended to take a bite and then put the spoon to her mouth. She must have got one grain in her mouth because she started to scream. Mom came running, grabbed Lucille and asked us what was wrong. We told her that Lucille ate lye. She made Lucille throw up. Mom started to cry and scream while somebody went and got the Company doctor. When he got there, he gave Mom some medicine saying Lucille was a lucky girl that she didn’t swallow any of the poison. Her mouth was full of blisters. I don't remember getting a spanking for what we did. So I guess Mom thought that Lucille got into the lye on her own. Lucille was one and half years old, I was four, and Shirley was seven. And I will admit that I was jealous of both sisters.

                                                  

left to right: Shirley, Willa Jean, Patsy, Jimmy, me.
Mom standing in doorway of our two room house which had a bedroom and
kitchen with a wash room in Orville, WV.