I was born on June 18, 1944, on Father's Day. I weighed 11 lbs. 4 ozs. Yes I was a big baby. I had coal black hair and my mommy said the nurses put bows in my hair in the nursery. When I was born my daddy wasn't at the hospital he was at a bar somewhere. No I don't remember that.
I will start back as far as I can remember. I was only three at the time and mommy, daddy and I were over at one of their friends houses, and I got sick I remember when I threw up it was brown. The next thing I knew I was in the hospital in a white cast iron crib, and in isolation. I remember my daddy coming to see me and he had to talk to me through a window. He could not come into my room. When I got older and my heart started giving me problems. The doctors started asking me if I had rheumatic fever when I was younger. I didn't know other then the time when I was in the hospital. My mom had passed away by then and no one else could tell me.
I have no idea how long I was in the hospital. When I got home my oldest sister MJB had gotten me a dollhouse and all the little furniture and babies to put in it. I loved that and played with it for all the time. Then a little sister came along. and I was getting older and LMG gave me lots of problems. She stabbed me in the back of the head with a pair of scissors because I wouldn't let her play with my paper dolls. Then one time she hit me over the head with a hammer when I wouldn't give her the swing I was on. But I will get even with her when we get older.
I am in kindergarten now and I remember the teacher giving us an assignment, we were to color a picture and when it was my turn I could go up and paint that same picture on an easel. I was so excited about this that when I got up to the easel I painted a completely different picture. The teacher was very upset with me for not following directions.
My mother came to my class one day for open house. I was so proud of her she was a beautiful woman. I went to greet her with the teacher. I remember the teacher asking me to do some thing and I said "Way do you always make me be the one that does everything, why can't someone else do it don't you see my mommy is here" and she said, “Because I know you will do it right.” Boy did I get in trouble when I got home for sassing the teacher. Back then if you got in trouble at school you were in more trouble at home.
My daddy built the house we lived in and I remember handing him the nails. We moved in and I celebrated my 4th birthday there. I lived in that house until I got married at the age of 18. We didn't have much, we were a poor family. My dad worked at the railroad, and mommy was a stay at home mom. There were 5 of us kids, 1 boy and 4 girls. The 3 older girls slept in one bed together, my brother slept on the couch and I slept with mommy and daddy. My daddy built on to the house when mommy was expecting her 6th child.
Every once in a while he would add onto the house, but by then the oldest sister got married. It had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, and our bathroom was out back behind the house. There was a pump in our back yard that we got our water. When my mother was expecting another baby, daddy built on. Two rooms in the back of the house and moved the kitchen to one of the new rooms and hooked our pump up inside the kitchen.
The only problem we had was that we lived on the other side of the tracks. Well it wasn't tracks just a street – Westwood. Everyone living on the west side of the street were considered white trash, everyone on the east side was in the city that made us living in the country. The roads were dirt, no streetlights and no sidewalks.
My dad drank a lot and I remember at dinnertime every Friday one of us kids would have to go down to the beer joint and get daddy. None of us liked doing it. I remember when it was my turn to go I went down opened the door and yelled in and ask if my daddy was there, and we would walk home together. It got to the point where daddy had to get another job. He worked in a factory, also, and used his money from the railroad for his drinking.
But we had love and we had to have an imagination. We played Tag, Kick the Can, Easy Easy Over, Lemonade, Red Rover, One a Cat, Money, and lots more games we made up. We played outside from morning till night.
Like I said we were a poor family. We wore hand me down clothes and took anything that was given to us. At the beginning of each school year we all went together down to the Board of Education and they gave us some new clothes for school. Us girls all got 2 dresses, a slip, 3 pairs of panties, 3 pairs of socks. a coat and a pair of shoes. Back in the 50's you could not wear jeans or slacks to school it had to be a dress. All of us kids went to the same school at one time.
We ate a lot of soups. Now when I say soup I really mean soup. Chili watered down, spaghetti watered down, all mixed together, potato soup also watered down. We had very little meat and daddy cooked Sunday dinners. He would go out and kill a chicken clean it and boil it. To this day I will not eat boiled chicken. That is the only way we ever had it, so he could make watered down noodle soup.
One day I ask daddy when we were havimg for dinner and he said stuffed round roast. I was so excited we were going to have a roast. When we set down to eat daddy brought his round roast out to the table and to my surprise it was a chunk of bologna about 12 inches long and stuffed with dressing. I was disappointed but it did taste good.
Every winter I would get strep throat at least once, some time 2-3 time. I am telling you this now because the doctors think it should be connected to the Hodgkin's. I also had the mumps, chicken pox and measles. I was given sulfa drugs, until I became allergic to it.
to be continued
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