THE OVERTURFS -- NEVER A DULL MOMENT

THE OVERTURFS – NEVER A DULL MOMENT

Buck and Eve – In the Beginning

Mom came from a family of 11. Her parents were Thomas Uhls, Sr. and Mabel (Humphrey) Uhls. She and her eight siblings grew up in the depression years but didn’t suffer as much as other families because her parents, who we called Mamma and Pappa, owned a little, red-shingled grocery store simply called Uhls Grocery which was situated on the corner of Cleveland and Odle in West Frankfort, Illinois. They purchased the store, got a new car and a new home all in the depression years, but they were able to do this only because of a tragedy. Grandma’s half brother, who worked for the Associated Press in Chicago, committed suicide by jumping out of a window, leaving Grandma with an inheritance. I was told he did so when the stock market crashed. Mom’s sister, Bernice, believes he did so because of the death of his wife, an opera singer, a few months before. If I had to guess, I would say it had to do with both. 

Mamma and Pappa were both reclusive. Grandpa would drive to the store and home and that is it. When he retired, he stayed home, period. He drove really slow in his big, long car. The two youngest of the nine kids would ride with him after helping in the store. James and Geraldine were riding in the car with him one day and James announced, “I’m in a hurry. I’m gonna get out and walk.” Mamma never left the house except on rare occasions. She got car sick easily, so that was one reason. But even if she didn’t get motion sickness, I doubt she would have traveled any more than she did. She wasn’t very trusting of people. 

Mamma and Pappa lived on the County Line Road between West Frankfort and Johnston City but their address was West Frankfort. Mom and her siblings had to walk to high school in town from their rural home.They went to the same high school that is still there. Mom was in the band. She played the clarinet and the band director would always put her at the end because she was short, so she had to take long strides. Dad quit school before getting to high school. He regretted it the rest of his life. He always wanted to be smart.

Mom was cute, petite and very witty. She was mild mannered, as were all of the Uhls, but at the same time she was a free spirit and spunky. She didn’t like being bound by social or etiquette laws. She would just do her thing in a quiet way without raising a big stink or making a big splash. Grandma tried hard to pass on the ways of a Southern Belle, having come from Tennessee herself, but Mom wanted little to do with those rules, so she just quietly disobeyed. For instance, Mamma wanted Mom to wear long sleeves all summer so that she wouldn’t get so tan, but Mom loved her dark tan and wasn’t about to wear long sleeves.

In later years, Mom would raise us altogether different than she was raised. If we wanted to eat our food with our fingers, no fuss was made. Mom chose her battles and we eating with our fingers was no big deal to her.

She had a happy outlook on life. She could sing, harmonize, and play the piano by ear (or by chords), and that brought us much happiness. She taught her younger brother, James, to play the piano by ear too. Mom played the clarinet in the high school band, so she did know how to read music.

She had a high school education and was once nominated for Homecoming Queen. Mom was fun-loving and didn’t spend much time looking at the negative side of life. Because she was a free spirit may have been one reason she was attracted to Dad. He truly was free, but mostly because his parents simply didn’t care where he was or what he did.

Though the Uhls family was better off than many, Mom and her sisters still wore feedsack dresses for a while-- the cotton ones with patterns. On the other hand, they had the clothes special made. Every one of the girls was beautiful and every one of the guys was handsome. Mom and Dean were very dark complexioned with dark eyes and hair and Ginny (Virginia) and Thomas were as blonde as blonde could be with blue eyes. The rest of the siblings were a mix. Our own family followed a similar pattern. The twins were blonde-headed and blue eyed while the rest of us were dark, though only Jamie is dark complexioned. One of her sons is also. One of Dean’s daughters is also dark. 

Dad was the son of (Levi) Zeigler and Charity Overturf. He had a twin, Edna, and an older sister, Ruth. Like Mom, he grew up in the depression era, but unlike Mom's family, his family suffered much during those years, especially from hunger. He knew quite well what that was like. He started high school but had to drop out when his parents divorced in order to work to help support his mother as well as himself. In spite of Dad's efforts to please his mother, she would remind him he would never amount to anything. She wasn't involved in shaping his life in a positive way. 

Mom didn’t know how Dad came to be free, she was simply attracted to his being able to come and go as he pleased. Ironically, Dad admired the Uhls family because they did care about each other and had the boundaries set by love that he was missing.

The entire families on both sides of Dad's family were unchurched and had few morals. He was definitely from the wrong side of town, which was the West City/Buckner area of Benton. That area has since gained respectability, more so than the rest of Benton, even. Maybe it lacked respectability because so many of Dad’s relatives lived in the area. They were heavy drinkers who spent a lot of time in taverns, were carousers and were hot-headed, verbally abusive, and oftentimes violent. Dad wanted out of that lifestyle, but there was still some emotional carryover into the marriage and our lives. He gave up drinking after marrying Mom.

Dad’s parents didn’t treat him well at all, especially his father. Grandpa Overturf was tall and fairly good looking. He had the same blue eyes that Dad had. He was a ladies’ man married several times and who had several ladies crying over his casket when he died. Grandpa Overturf worked for the post office, but I’m not sure in what capacity. He would live off of women when he could. He was the first baby boy born in Zeigler. The man who founded the town told Grandpa’s mother that he would make Grandpa rich someday if she would name him after the town, and so she named him Levi Zeigler. The town’s founder didn’t keep his part of the bargain, however. Grandpa was called by the name of the town or Zig, for short. Dad’s mother, whom we called “Granny,” was very emotionally and verbally abusive. She was a heavy smoker and liked her men. In fact, she preferred them to Dad. And yet when Dad went in the service, and even though he was married, she expected him to send a big part of his earnings to her. Dad sent another big part to Mom and had very little to eat on.

Dad had very dark hair in his younger years, very blue eyes, and a great set of teeth, which made for a beautiful smile. In contrast, Mom had her teeth pulled when she was 16 and had dentures put in. She was very self-conscious about letting anyone see her brush her teeth. She was still as cute as a button. Dad was 5’__” tall and Mom was a petite 5’ tall, if that. They were both thin when they married, but that could probably be said of most people coming out of the depression era, especially young people.

Dad was around alcohol all of his life but gave up drinking himself when he married Mom – with one exception. On New Year’s Eve he was sitting in a mine cage over a shaft when someone broke out a bottle of liquor. They passed the bottle around and each of them pretended to take a drink – except Dad, who did drink because he wasn’t in on the joke. He ended up getting drunk and climbing up on top of the side rail of the cage to do a “jig.” The guys had to grab hold of him and pull him back into the cage. That was the last of his drinking days. However, he smoked from his early teens to his 50s when he saw some of his friends who smoked drop dead at an early age.

World War 2 had just ended in May of 1945 when Mom and Dad married on November 3^rd, 1945(?). Dad was in the service when they married and was stationed in Puerto Rico. He got out early on a medical discharge because he developed bleeding ulcers. Linda became one of the baby boomers when she was born on November 26th, 1947 and I followed a year and 10 days later on December 6th, 1948. Mom thought she couldn’t get pregnant as long as she was nursing, but she found out different. She nearly died when she had Linda because she seizured from a bad kidney infection. She was told not to get pregnant right away, but Providence or destiny changed her plans and along came I.

Mom and Dad lived in Murphysboro the first couple of years of our lives and had a doughnut shop there. Linda, myself and the twins were all born at the veterans hospital in Christopher.

Dad worked several different jobs that took him away from home. They were hard jobs in lousy weather and under lousy conditions, but he did what he had to do to support his family. One day he was working up north on high lines when Mom called him and told him to quit his job and come home. She didn’t much care for being alone with two children. He also worked for a short time in the mines. The big West Frankfort mine explosion of Orient #9 mine might have had something to do with his lack of interest in working in the mines.

This is just a tidbit of my beginning years: Mom told me that when I was a baby (her word, but probably a toddler), I fell through a window and landed on the ground below unhurt.

The Little Green House

 

My earliest memories were in the house we called “The Little Green House" in West

Frankfort, Illinois on the southwest end of Odle Street. It started out as two rooms with ugly, dark green shingles on the outside. From what I have heard, Grandpa Uhls and his son, our Uncle Kendall, built the house. Kendall was a postman most of his working career, but he was also a very good carpenter. At The Little Green House we had a “slop jar,” which was a granite bucket with a lid, to pee in at night so that we didn’t have to go outside to the outdoor toilet. When the twins came along, another room was added to the house, but the house still hadn’t outgrown its Little Green House name nor would it ever. Next door to us lived an elderly lady, Mrs. Lee, and her son, Paul, who was crippled. He ran when he walked. They were nice people who had a little store along one wall of their home with just a few basic items but, of course, the part I remember best was the candy. It wasn’t always fresh, however, but neither was Grandpa’s candy in his store. There was no air conditioning back then.

Somewhere between the Little Green House and Grandpa’s store was a white house. The lady in the house had a granddaughter named Molly. Molly was blind, but you would never know it except to look at her eyes. Her hearing was so good that it substituted for the lack of sight. I remember her chasing me around the yard and gravel driveway while she was riding a tricycle, pedaling every bit as fast as I was running. No matter what direction I ran, she was never far from my heels – and I was a fast runner. I remember being terrified because I didn’t know if she could or would stop if I did. Fortunately I never found out. I ran into the house to be safe. I would love to meet Molly again. Someone with that much spunk and capabilities would be worth knowing. I just hope she’s not driving a car using her hearing in place of sight.

I remember having two Beagle dogs while living at The Little Green House. If we had any more than that, I don’t remember. Dad’s Uncle Paul raised Beagles and that’s where Dad got his love for the dogs. I don’t know if “love” is the right word, however, especially not compared to how some people love their pets. They were still dogs, in Dad’s mind, and not part of the family. I remember one day running to Dad and screaming, “Dad, Dad, the dogs are stuck together and can’t get apart!!!” I was assured that was OK, but I wasn’t so sure. It didn’t look OK. I couldn’t understand why Dad didn’t help those poor dogs get unstuck.

Linda was cross-eyed in her early years and had to get glasses. She wore them until about the 4th grade and never wore them again until her 40s. She had Ambliopia, a trait she inherited from Dad and which my son, also has. Ambliopia is a lazy eye condition. One eye does all the work and the other just goes along for the ride. The eye problem didn’t hurt her looks any because Linda would grow up to be very beautiful. 

When Linda and I were toddlers, Mom would read the book Henny Penny to Linda and me and would incorporate us into the story, so the story characters then became Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey, Lindy Pindy and Becky Lecky. The twins revised my name to Beck-a-Leck in later years. Mom gave them the names Carleo and Marleo, but I have no idea where those names came from. When they were born, Mom was going to name them Nola and Lola. They are very grateful that she changed her mind.

The twins were born on December 27, 1951 – a month premature -- during the years we lived at The Little Green House. When it was time for their birth, the doctors prepared Mom for a cesarean section because the twins were holding onto one another, but Mom told the doctor that they were coming and a cesarean wouldn’t be necessary. She was right. Carolyn bid Marilyn farewell and made the trip through the birth canal. After Carolyn arrived, Mom told the doctor she wasn’t having the other one. Fortunately it wasn’t entirely up to her and Marilyn was born. The twins were a bluish color when they were born. The doctor didn’t expect them to live but Mom had other ideas. She fed them a special formula which provided extra nourishment and she gave them lots of love and attention. I’m sure the twins’ spunk also had something to do with their survival. They were hyperactive.

When Mom and Dad brought the twins home from the hospital, Mom placed one baby at one end of the crib and one at the other end. Other than seeing them there for the first time, I have no other memories until they repeatedly started jumping off the piano into the rocking chair below. Pianos were tall in those days.

For some reason I have a memory of Dad letting me “drive” the car just before the twins and Mom came home from the hospital. I remember getting angry with him because he wouldn’t let me totally take the wheel. Obviously I have been independent all of my life.

It didn’t take the twins long to become healthy and full of energy – a little too much energy. Though there wasn’t a name for their excess energy back then, we now know it as ADHD. It continues to surface in the family. The twins were very sweet and just as cute, but quite a handful. They spent their growing up years as tomboys but by the time they reached high school age, they had turned into femme fatales. They didn’t slow down, however, and until the day he died, Dad never ceased to call them his little tornadoes.

Sometimes in the summertime Linda and I took our baths in a big, round, aluminum tub in the front yard of the Little Green House. We had a great time. When the water that splashed hit the dirt, we were able to make mud pies.

Geraldine, Mom’s youngest sister, used to make some of our clothes. My favorite dress that she made for me was the “duckie” dress. It had little ducks all over it. She made a big fuss over us kids and she was so much fun – very witty and full of life. When I was in the 6th grade she made me a sack dress. I loved that one too. And for graduation she made me a dress out of organza, which was difficult to work with. 

Speaking of ducks, another memory I have involved a duck – Donald Duck. One night while living in the little green house I had a nightmare and dreamed that Donald Duck bit me. I ran to Mom and Dad’s bed and insisted I sleep with them because Donald Duck had bit me in my bed. They tried to convince me that he didn’t really bite me, but nevertheless I slept with them that night. In my mind I was sure it had really happened. I hadn’t yet learned how to separate dreams from reality.

The day Linda went to Kindergarten at age 4, I bawled my eyes out until I threw up because I either wanted to go with her or for her to stay home. Then the following year I started Kindergarten at the age of 4. I wouldn’t be five until December. I had to walk a mile or more to school through the streets of town. The first leg of the journey was by myself, then I would meet up with Dickie Summers, a little boy three days older than I who lived caddy-corner from Grandpa’s store and on the corner of the next block. His house was about ¼ - ½ mile from ours. His dad had been killed in that terrible mine explosion I mentioned before. I must have gone to afternoon Kindergarten because I don’t remember Linda being with us. The walk for each of us wasn’t without peril because a man tried to pick Linda up one day but she refused his offer for a ride. Mom had warned her never to do that. Mom had previously thought all she only had to worry about was a mean dog biting one of us. That’s why she insisted I walk with Dickie – so he could protect me. Or maybe so I wouldn't be so scared. Back then dogs could run free.

Then the memories continued to turn more serious. A neighbor girl gave Linda a ride on the back fender of her bicycle and Linda forgot or didn't know to hold her feet out. Her heel got caught in the spokes and it took all the layers of skin off. Until the day she died, she had a wrinkled spot there, like as if she had been burned. I think the girl on the bicycle's last name was Travelstead.

And then the worst day that occurred while living at The Little Green House came when Mom and Dad told us that Dad’s sister, Ruth Rosser, had killed herself. I later learned that Ruth had gotten a letter from the state saying her children would be taken from her because she was neglecting them. She was an alcoholic and loved her children but needed help. Her husband was useless to the family. Her children, Sharon and Butch (William/Bill) came to live with us and we never heard from their dad again. I was told he had already abandoned them, but then others would say he was in and out of their lives before coming to live with us. One thing is for sure: he didn't bother to claim them after Ruth died. Dad’s twin, Edna Hammonds (at that time), was the one who discovered their sister. Ruth was a little over six feet tall and was beautiful, but hated her height. By today’s standards, she would be model material.That is her on the left in the picture and to the right is Dad's twin, Edna.

Sharon cried almost every night for years. They had endured some terrible circumstances while living with their mother, but they still loved her, especially Sharon. One memory I have of Sharon and Butch before their mother’s death is of our family going around the Benton town circle or roundabout and seeing them dressed only in their bottom underwear watching a television through the window of an appliance store. Televisions had just come out, and though Sharon and Butch couldn’t hear the sound through the window, they were nevertheless fascinated by what they saw. Sharon said she and Butch would sneak into the show as often as they could.

After her mother’s funeral someone gave Sharon a bag of candy. She wouldn’t share it with anyone because she so rarely got candy and she has carried guilt ever since. When she went to her new home at The Little Green House, she carried Carolyn in one arm and Marilyn in the other arm as she entered the house. She thought they were adorable, and they were. The last time I was aware that she cried at night over her mother was when we lived on 20th street, which would have been about 1960-61 and she would have been in 8th grade. She recently told me she cried long past that.

Cleveland Street

Back to West Frankfort events, naturally our little three-room green house became cramped, so Mom and Dad moved us to Cleveland Street across from Grandpa’s grocery store (Uhls Grocery). The house was two doors down from Mom’s sister, Virginia Downard and her husband, Donald. They had three children: David, Rachel and Alan. Next door were some close friends, Walt and Shirley Denton, and their little son, Scottie. One night Shirley got up in the middle of the night and saw an orange glow coming from our house. Then she realized that it was our heating stove. Dad had forgotten to adjust the draft on the coals before going to bed and the stove got so hot, it turned orange. At least that’s the way I heard it.

The worst thing I remember happening while living on Cleveland Street was that Carolyn climbed up on the metal swing set and got her thumb caught in the hinge at the top that moved the double swing. It took her whole thumbnail off. Other than that, our stay there was relatively uneventful.

We got our first television while living on Cleveland Street – black and white, of course. It was while living in this house that I remember walking to school in freezing cold weather and the teacher taking me into the bathroom to run cold water over my fingers. I thought she was nuts because I wanted warmth, not more cold, but she said she had to warm my fingers up a little at a time. I now know that is what should be done for frostbite to keep from losing fingers or toes. We wore dresses to school a lot back then. I look back now and wonder how we survived.

Stella Street

We moved from Cleveland Street to one street south on Stella Street – behind the store instead of in front of it. I have quite a few memories of events that occurred while living in that house. My first memory was of Butch insisting he saw a man peeping into his window. He was truly afraid. Dad checked around the house and was convinced Butch had just imagined it, but I'm not so sure he did.

Mom was pregnant with Jamie and seemed to be depressed a lot around that time. She had gall stones that gave her a lot of trouble, which didn't help. She insisted that Cokes helped relieve the pain. She loved her bottled Cokes. When she would have her attacks, she would be in a tremendous amount of pain. She took no pain medications. She just suffered through them.

We would walk from Stella Street to the pool at the City Park. I nearly drowned there once but my cousin, Sheila Hammonds, Dad's twin's daughter, reached out and grabbed me when I was going under for the third time. I lay on the side of the pool and bawled my eyes out. I knew how close I had come to death and I had never been so terrified. A lifeguard was on duty, but she was watching other areas. Thank Goodness Sheila was with us that day.

One day in the summertime Linda climbed a tree and discovered she became dizzy with heights, but she discovered this too late. She fell from the tree and hit her head on a large tree root. It knocked her out cold and we thought she was dead. When Dad drove in the driveway from work, we went running to the car screaming, “Linda fell out of the tree and she’s dead.” Dad peeled out of the driveway and went racing to the hospital. The rest of us were split up between Ginny and the house of a friend, Gloria Stone, who lived in the area. As it was, Linda had a concussion, which made her sick to her stomach as concussions do. She had eaten corn on the cob before falling and she went many years before touching another piece of corn on the cob. She insisted that was what made her so sick.

In another incident, the twins and our cousins, David and Rachel Downard, decided to put towels around their necks, climb up on the shed in the back of the house on Stella Street, and pretend they were going to fly off of it like Superman. David, who was the twins’ age, thought the towel would truly enable him to fly, so he put it on, jumped off of the shed spread eagle and landed on the ground the same way. It knocked the breath out of him but by the grace of God he was otherwise unhurt. This is especially remarkable because he was a frail kid with bad kidneys. His bad kidneys would eventually contribute to his death as an adult, yet he lived a full life until then and was always jovial.

David threw a metal toy gun at me one time and the butt of it hit me in the eye. His dad, Donald Downard, was really upset and gave me a half dollar, which was a big deal back then. I thought it was worth the black eye because I immediately went to the Heights Bakery and got penny candy. I did have a black eye for a while, though.

While we were living on Stella Street in the 50s, a big storm came up and we heard that Mt. Vernon had a tornado. We knew that our aunt, Bernice Muzzarelli, and her son might be in it. We walked from our house to Ginny’s house in the blowing rain and took shelter in her damp, dark basement where we listened to the radio to see if we could hear names and, sure enough, Bernice’s house had been hit. We went the next morning to see her house and there was nothing but rubble there. The 4-year-old son of her next-door neighbor had been killed by the tornado. There had been a long chicken coop in the area of her house and it was demolished also. She lived by a drive-in theater, but I don’t recall if it was destroyed. Probably. I think it sat where the Rec Club is now. Bernice and Johnny were not injured. Some of their neighbors had run to her house and they were uninjured also. Ironically, the house of one family who ran to Bernice’s was untouched because the tornado was one of those that “hops,” and it had hopped over their house. Bernice and her husband, Andy, who was at work at the time, rebuilt in the same spot, but this time with a storm cellar.

Jamie was born while we lived on Stella Street. She was an unbelievably good baby and was/is beautiful. She more than made up for any sadness Mom suffered during her pregnancy. Linda came up with Jamie’s name. She was in school with a red-head with that name. Linda thought it was such a pretty name and asked Mom if she would consider the name, which Mom did, of course. The classmate’s full name was Jamie Daly and her dad was the mayor. Her name would come up again many years later when I discovered that this same Jamie Daly sent my one day husband-to-be to the hospital while they were racing go-karts. It’s a small world. They were in about 8th grade at the time.

I used to love to tap dance. I have no idea where I picked it up, but I’ve often said I was born dancing. Our aunt Geraldine came to our house on Stella Street with her boyfriend, Don Griffin, and insisted that I tap dance for him. I was very embarrassed but finally did. He is now a doctor. If I were to meet him again, my first inclination would be to tap dance.

It was on Stella Street where the infamous story of Dad spanking the wrong twin twice occurred. Dad’s eyesight was never good, and so if he wasn’t paying close attention, he couldn’t always tell the twins apart. Well, one day Marilyn did something wrong and Dad grabbed Carolyn and whipped her butt. When he realized what he had done, he felt like a heel and so gave Marilyn a dime and whipped Carolyn again. He couldn't always tell them apart. He never lived that one down.

We loved catching tadpoles in what we called “The Tadpole Pond.” In reflecting back, I realize the tadpole pond was created after a house had been torn down and only the basement remained. The basement then filled up with rainwater and frogs eventually made their way there and laid their eggs, which would hatch and become tadpoles. We would catch the tadpoles in a tin can by lying on the ground and extending an arm into the water. The Tadpole Pond was located somewhere in the vicinity of the store on the west side, but we’re not sure exactly where. I think somewhat north.

We also took little walking trips around town, even though we were very young, and in places Mom was unaware we were touring. And yet it was one of those trips that helped shape my life. Several of us started walking down the railroad tracks one day. There were no houses on either side of the tracks – only brush – for much of the walk, even though we were in town. From time to time we would see piles of trash beside the tracks where people had made dumps. We would go through the trash to see if we could find anything interesting. I’ve always loved books, so I latched onto one that I found in one of the heaps. It happened to be a book with testimonies of remarkable things that had happened to Christians, things that could only be explained as God’s intervention into their lives. There was story after story and they were quite moving. I knew then that’s what I wanted for my life – God watching over me and my family. Ironically, or perhaps by God’s design, I would one day write my own testimony of how God intervened in our lives. That story will come later.

Since we were poor, we didn’t get many toys. We had to make our own fun and we didn’t seem to have any trouble doing that. Dad did whatever he could to create things for us to play with. He made us kites out of newspapers. The tails were made from torn sheets. He made wooden stilts for us and they were one of our favorite toys. We would get on the porch and stand the stilts up on the ground, then get on them from the porch. We all got really good at walking on them except Linda, who was never coordinated. Dad also made us a go-kart that resembled the one on The Little Rascals tv show. He never could keep it running, though. It was great fun while it lasted. A few years later Dad built rubber band guns for us and a wooden game board with indentations all around it for marbles. It was a little like a Sorry game. He and Mom would have friends over and they would play the game too. He didn’t remember doing all this in his later years, but we remember. Later, during our country years, he made a game board that resembled a Sorry game but it was made out of wood. We used marbles to play the game.

Country Living

We lived on Stella Street a couple of years then moved to the country, technically Thompsonville. We still considered it West Frankfort since that’s where our hearts were. Most of us kids would say those were our best years. For Carolyn and Butch, they were the best of times and the worst of times because Carolyn got encyphilitis one summer and Butch got Rocky Mountain Fever the next summer. Carolyn had to go to Children’s Hospital in St. Louis where she had a very painful spinal tap. When she was still sick at home, she had no sense of balance and would only let our neighbor, Verlene Rumsey, who was very large, pick her up and help her to the bathroom. Though Carolyn could have died from this fairly rare disease, she recovered fully and had no after affects. She met her first black person, another little girl named Quenlin, while in the hospital and they became very close friends after only a few hours.

While Carolyn was in the hospital, Granny came to stay with us. She was not a good mother to our dad so we didn't see much of her. Her staying with us was a nightmare. She was a lousy cook. Mom was the best cook in the world and Granny’s cooking was the worst. We all vividly remember her bread pudding. It was gross. None of us will eat bread pudding to this day. Her other dishes weren’t much better, though Sharon remembers her fried chicken being delicious. Speaking for myself, I don’t remember anything delicious that she cooked. Carolyn lost weight while in the hospital from being sick and the rest of us kids lost weight at home from refusing to eat Granny’s cooking.

When Butch developed Rocky Mountain Fever the next summer, he went to the Benton Hospital.The  only thing I remember about his disease is that it was serious. I don't know much about his stay at the hospital except hearing that he took a liking to sliced tomatoes and cottage cheese while there, which I thought was disgusting. Mom never fed us cottage cheese. Only Mom and Dad were allowed to visit Butch. We had to stay in the car while Mom and Dad visited. Butch and his sister, Sharon, were really our cousins but Mom and Dad raised them. Because we lived together and experienced everything, good and bad, together, we called them brother and sister. Sharon was special to me. She thought everything I said and did was cute.

Dad bought the country house and 40 acres for about $4,000. It had a two-seater outhouse, a large one as outhouses go. He fixed it up with linoleum and made it less scary. We had a portable potty in the house. It never occurred to me who had to dump it every day, but it stands to reason it was Dad and probably Mom sometimes. We had a couple of dogs while in the country. One we called Pink Eye for obvious reasons and the other was Lou. They both died during those years.

Dad put out a garden each of the summers we were there and we loved to go grab a potato, radish, or other vegetable out of the ground, brush off the dirt (which included manure) and eat it. I’ve never tasted better vegetables. You know how good, fresh-turned soil smells after a rain. Well, it tastes just as good as it smells.

Mom got pregnant with Casey during our country stay. She had been told not to have any more kids, but Providence or destiny had other plans once again. She was depressed a lot during her pregnancy like with her last one, but was overjoyed when she gave birth to a son, our brother Casey. Dad finally had a namesake. Casey was born with a hernia and had to have surgery when he was just a few weeks old. He was a sweet baby and we all doted on him. My most vivid memory of Casey during those years was that he loved commercials. He would be lying in his baby bed ready to fall asleep, but if a commercial came on, he would jump up and hang onto the rail of his baby bed stretching to see around the open door to see the television. 

It continues to amaze me that Mom would get all eight of us kids ready for church on Sunday morning, then go home and cook a big Sunday dinner. She would sometimes let a rump roast cook in a cast iron dutch oven. It would melt in your mouth when it was done. And the gravy was phenomenal. Other times she would fry chicken and she couldn’t fry just one, not with ten in the family. The breast was the most popular chicken piece and no one wanted the wings. Now it is the opposite. I always liked the wings for 3 reasons: they were juicy, they were dark meat, and they were small. I didn't eat much so small was better. Mom would always fix a big meal for supper on other days. The meal always included a meat, a potato dish, a salad and a vegetable. Sometimes she would fix a dessert, but she did most of her dessert cooking in later years. Sometimes she would make fudge with hickory nuts we had found in the fall.

After we all went to church on Sunday at the First Christian Church when it was at the old location, Dad would stop at the Heights Bakery and get each of us a Tootsie Roll Pop. We thought that was the greatest treat. At other times during the week we would stop at Bowen’s ice cream. I don’t know how Mom and Dad afforded to buy ice cream for all of us, but they made a way and I’m so glad they did. To this day I have not tasted better ice cream. Casey would hurry up and eat his ice cream, then would grab Mom’s out of her hand and finish it too. Mom’s hamburgers were the best in the world, but the second best hamburgers could be found at The 149 Grill on the east edge of West Frankfort. That was a rare treat for us. And somewhere in town we got coney islands, which were hot dogs with sweet slaw. Scrumptious.

After church and Sunday dinner in the summertime, we would pile into the car and go fishing or swimming at a lake. As an adult, I did well to get two kids ready for church and I needed a Sunday afternoon nap even though I would only fix a light lunch.

One of my favorite memories while living in the country and even into later years is Mom playing the piano and the rest of us singing along with her. She taught the twins to harmonize and Butch and Sharon also had great voices, but singing is not my gift. Nevertheless I enjoyed singing with the rest of them.

I remember Dad making homemade ice cream outside. On at least one occasion Jim and Peggy Brotherton would visit and Jim would play the guitar while we sang outside. Dad would turn the handle on the ice cream freezer and would have one of the twins sit on top of the freezer on a folded towel to hold the handle in place. They thought it was a really important job and so were glad to do it. Other times Jim and Peggy would come over and he would play his guitar while Mom played the piano. The piano was a big part of our lives. I'm sure it was Mom's therapy.

While we lived in the country, we would put green persimmons on the end of a flexible “switch” and launch them at each other. In the fall we would go hickory nut hunting, then Mom would make hickory nut fudge. We swung on "grapevines" and several of us fell in the creek when one would break. Mom was never happy when that happened. We called them grapevines, but if they had truly been grapevines, the grapes would have been the size of the ones that Joshua and Caleb brought back to Moses from the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey but also the land of giants. Two bunches had to be carried on a pole held across the shoulders and the grape bunches draped to the ground. As far as we were concerned, we were in the land of milk and honey right there in the country. We didn’t need the grapes – just the vine.

We skated on a frozen pond without skates. It was a hog pond we called the Skunk Pond. Someone had given me a pair of tap-dancing shoes and they were perfect for sliding across the ice thanks to the metal pieces on each end of the shoe’s sole. We also climbed trees, and I don’t mean a branch or two high. I fell from the very top of a tall tree to the very bottom and the only injury I got was a scratch on my leg from a barbed wire fence that was at the base of the tree. Sharon and Carolyn expected to find me dead. The branch under my foot had given way, which caused the descent. The branch must have been dead. That was just another occasion where God’s angels were put to work. We really kept them busy.

One day we got in big trouble after swimming in a creek. As it turned out, the creek was a sewer drainage. and we all stunk to high heaven. It’s one of the few times where I saw Mom really angry. She hosed us off outside. She wouldn’t let us into the house until she did. While we were swimming in the “creek,” there were little green snakes hanging off every other branch (or so it seemed), but that didn’t bother us any. Sharon played with them but I was content to look and not touch.

We weren’t afraid of the green snakes, but the girls had heard stories about black racer snakes chasing people. Linda and I’m not sure who else – probably Sharon -- were just sure they saw one and they ran all the way home from Carolyn Rumsey’s house, which was about 1/8 – ¼ mile down the road. They were convinced the racer was at their heels. 

I used to get on my bike early in the morning and go blackberry picking until one day I reached in to get some berries and saw something with a diamond pattern on it. I realized it was a huge snake. I didn’t think we had snakes like that big in that area, but there it was curled around a small tree. That was the last time I went berry picking. In that case I was on foot and I ran all the way home and this time it was I that just knew the snake was at my heels.

There were also stories floating around about a German Shepherd that would attack people at the neck, and one day Sharon and I were on our way home from Jo Ann Harris’ house, which was about a mile and a half or two miles away, when Sharon thought she saw the dog. We ran as fast as we could go and we were both fast runners. Sharon had long legs, though. We ran barefoot on the gravel road. We were always barefoot which caused the bottoms of our feet to callous over like shoe soles. The only tender places were between the toes.

Sharon and I got along well. She thought everything I did was cute which made me feel special. One of my favorite memories is that I would hold onto her leg and she would drag me around the house. Both of us would be laughing our heads off. She was tall and thin and I was short and skinny as a rail, so she was able to drag me pretty easily.

We kids were all playing in the hayloft of our big barn one summer day when Jamie, who was only about 3 or 4, climbed up the ladder to the loft, sat down on the edge of the opening with one side of her bum but not the other. She fell off and hit a 2 by 4 railing below. Her head gushed with blood as if her head had been split wide open and she had to go get a few stitches. Our neighbor, Verlene Rumsey, Carolyn Rumsey’s mother, took care of us while Mom took Jamie to the hospital.

Carolyn Rumsey, my friend who lived down the road, was my age, so I had a good friend in the time that we lived in the country. She had two mischievous older brothers, Harold and Robert, but they were mostly pranksters, not really bad. They did take up smoking at an early age, which was really taboo in those days. They talked Butch into trying one and he got in big trouble with Dad. He never smoked the rest of his life (that I know of). Carolyn and Marilyn tried smoking an Indian Cigar, which is what we called the long, dried pod of seeds from a nearby tree. The twins got so sick that they never wanted to smoke anything else the rest of their lives. There was another time that Dad let them take a puff of a cigarette and he told them to swallow the smoke. They did and again they got sick. He said he did it to turn them against smoking. He smoked until he was in his 50s. His friends were beginning to drop dead and he was having heart problems of his own, so that gave him the motivation to quit smoking for good.

I learned to dance rock and roll-style while living in the country by watching a new television show called American Bandstand. It didn’t take me long at all to pick up the dance steps. The dances still required partners back then so Linda became mine. We danced the Jitterbug together. We just called it Rock n Roll. We were there at the birth of Rock n Roll. Linda and I had a pretty good little dance routine going that we exercised long into our adult lives.

Dad was driving back and forth from our house in Thompsonville, 7 miles east of West Frankfort, to his job at the Illinois Power Company in Mt. Vernon while we were living in the country. Many a time I would hear him in the driveway trying to get the car started, especially in snowy or freezing weather. We always had junk cars in those days. I can’t imagine the stress he endured.

We rode the bus to Logan School. One day we slid off the road into a ditch and a farmer (Anna Mae Browning’s dad) had to come with his tractor to get us out. It got quite cold in the meantime and was a little scary.

We had a mother sow (which we pronounced “sal,” and still do) and chickens when we lived on the farm. A sow/sal is a female pig and they are mean after they have piglets. This female was mean before having the piglets. When she came to the farm on a truck, she sounded like a bucking bronco in the back of the truck.

We had a chicken house and would kill the chickens and eat them. There’s no better fried chicken in the world than fresh, free-to-run chickens. Same for the eggs. Dad taught us how to wring their necks by giving their necks a quick jerk with a twist of the wrist. I was pretty good at it, but Linda wasn’t. I felt sorry for the chickens whose necks she tried to wring. Their necks were twice as long by the time she got through with them and they were still alive. Their heads would flop back and forth as they attempted to walk across the chicken yard. The twins each tried their hand at beheading a chicken by putting a board across its neck and standing on it while pulling on the head. Sharon or Dad had to put the chickens out of their misery.

We loved gathering eggs from the chicken coop. It became the safehouse of sorts for Linda and Sharon one day when they got in the surrounding pen with the sow and it took out after them. Little did they know that mother sows can be quite aggressive and as I mentioned before, this sow was a big, mean one, anyway. The girls ran the length of the pen and into the chicken coop with the sow close behind them. They jumped on top of the roosting racks thinking they were safe, but the sow wasn’t ready to give up. She broke down the rack trying to get to the girls. Though Mom was about half the size of the sow, she took out after it with a broom and scared it off. The sow had met its match when confronted by another mother. The sow’s name was Pork Chop and that’s what we turned her into.

The eight of us kids were divided into the “big kids” and the “little kids.” The little kids couldn’t do what the big kids did, like stay up later, and they couldn’t go where the big kids went on many occasions, so being one of the little kids didn’t set too well with the twins. We big kids were quite smug about it. We got to rub our high status in quite a bit during the country years.

The Move to Mt. Vernon

In the summer of 1960 we moved to 515 South 20^th Street in Mt. Vernon. It was a duplex and Mom and Dad rented the whole thing. I slept in the spare kitchen with the cabinets still in the room. That was fine with me because I was a pack rat. I saved Top Value stamps, Eagle stamps, bubble gum machine and Cracker Jack charms and cardboard discs that came in Valomilks, which I traded in for a free Valomilk. Butch slept on the back porch or what could be considered a sun room. At least he had his own room. Fortunately the house had two bathrooms, which was unusual for old houses from that era but remember this was a duplex. We got our first telephone while living in this house. It was a party line. We weren’t supposed to listen in to other people’s conversations, but the temptation was a little too much to resist by some of us.

When the school year started after the move, Linda and Sharon started in the 8th grade at Casey Jr. High School and Butch and I started in the 7th grade. I had a ponytail down to my waist. Right away 11 guys flirted with me, but when I cut that ponytail, they all lost interest in me. Guys can be so shallow.

Next door to our house on 20th street were Mr. and Mrs. Dyel. They lived in a two-story house. My daughter would one day live where they did. On the other side of us was Mrs. Kluck. As if her name wasn’t funny enough, in the apartment above Mr. and Mrs. Dyel was a kid named David Boob and his mother. As a kid, it was difficult to say either name without laughing. Behind the Dyels was a tiny home in which an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Black, lived. They were really sweet people. Mr. Black was blind. Marilyn used to help clean their house and he would pay her. Casey (age 2) loved to visit them and they loved his visits. Casey was quite a talker. Mom used to say he would be a politician, or that he never met a stranger.

I had my tonsils and adenoids out after we moved to 20^th street. They used ether for anesthesia. They rubbed the cream all over my place and all of a sudden I felt like a little speck revolving around the universe. I thought that was what it was like to be dead. That smell didn’t go away for several days after I had gone home. I should have had the surgery many years before. Because I didn’t, I was sick a lot. My hearing was poor, I had earaches all the time and I talked through my nose. I had little appetite and was often out of sorts. I could never enjoy Thanksgiving because I never felt well. I caught every virus that came along. Once my tonsils were removed, I rarely got sick. However, I’m still grouchy at times.

The Car Wreck

The memory that supersedes all others during our growing-up years occurred while we lived on 20th Street. It was Easter Day, April, 1961. We had already attended church at Southwest Church of Christ on 26th Street, ate our Easter dinner, then headed for our Great-Grandmother’s funeral in Benton still in our Easter clothes. All 10 of us were in the car. Casey was 2, Jamie was 4, Linda and Sharon, were in 8th grade, Butch and I were in 7th grade and the twins were in the 4th grade. As we were traveling Rt. 37 South approaching Benton, Linda was showing me a school picture that Vernie Wittenbrink had given her and then BAM!! The next thing I knew the car was rolling and rolling, taking us with it.

Three teenage girls had been joyriding and passed on a combination hill and curve and headed right for us. Dad swerved and thought they would miss us, but they didn’t. He yelled “Watch out.!” The passenger side door in the front flew open during one of the rolls and Mom and Casey, who had been sitting in her lap, flew out of the car. I use the word “flew” in describing their exit from the car because I personally believe an angel carried them safely away from the car. What usually happens in rollover accidents is that the door opens, the passenger falls out and the car lands on them. It could only be by the grace of God that it didn’t land on Mom and Casey. Why Marilyn and Jamie weren’t thrown out along with them is also puzzling. They were also in the front seat and the car had no seat belts. God took care of them too. The rest of us were packed in the back seat like sardines so that we could hardly move around.

We all survived the crash, but Mom didn’t fare as well as the rest of us. She landed on her back, specifically her shoulders, still holding Casey. He was unhurt, but Mom’s shoulders were crushed and she had cracked ribs. The wind had been knocked out of her and so her eyes rolled back into her head. We thought she might be dead. We were all in a state of shock and trying to make sense out of it all, even wondering if it was really happening. I remember my major concern after the accident was, of all things, the car radio. It was still playing happy music after the car stopped and while we were traumatized. I was so angry with that radio. I thought it had a lot of nerve. I couldn’t wait to turn it off. Then someone came running to me and said that Mom was hurt bad and was maybe dead. By the time I got to her, she was coming to but couldn’t move. She wanted someone to raise her head a little so that she could breathe. Sharon says that Butch shook his fist at the driver of the other car and threatened her. The ambulance took Mom to the hospital and Dad rode with her. The troopers probably took the rest of us. I was in too much shock to remember for sure.

It just so happened that Ginny, Mom’s sister, and her family were on their way to Mt. Vernon to visit us, not realizing we were going to a funeral. They passed the accident after we had gone to the hospital and just knew when they saw the car that most of us would be dead. It didn’t take them long to get to the Benton Hospital where Mom was taken. Grandpa Overturf, ironically, was making a similar journey to our house and he too ended up in the waiting room at the hospital. Granny and a few other relatives and friends soon showed up. Granny didn’t get to attend her own mother’s funeral. I remember hearing Granny looking at Grandpa Overturf adoringly and saying, “These are our children.” I think she thought we had that car accident just so that destiny could bring them back together. I wanted to roll my eyes but I didn’t. I knew what was going on.

The doctor who repaired Mom’s shoulders knew exactly what to do because his wife had similar injuries in a car accident and he had studied up on what to do. He performed Mom’s surgery without using pins and she had full use of her arms again, but not for the six weeks that both arms were in a cast.

The state troopers who investigated the accident, John Boyd and ______ Solomon, happened to be friends of Mom and Dad’s because they were co-workers with our uncle, Andy Muzzarelli, also a state trooper. One of them said that being packed in the car like sardines was one thing that saved us. The other thing that saved us was that we were riding in an old, heavy Packard car. That was all we could afford in the age of the new lightweight cars, but being poor and being many saved our lives. Just think, if Butch and Sharon hadn’t come to live with us, there wouldn’t have been as many and the outcome might have been different. God really does work all things to the good.

God didn’t choose to save just half of us or 7 out of 10, or even 9 out of 10. He chose to save all of us. He obviously has a plan for each of us and that plan may extend into the future through our descendents.

Most of our backs were wrenched in the wreck, but mine was the only one that had to have ongoing medical treatment after the wreck. Maybe that is because I have a slight case of scoliosis. Or maybe it was because I was on the side of the car that took the impact and the ones on the outer parts of the seats, had a more intense ride during the rolls. Butch had a broken nose and Dad had a limp in his left leg for the first day or two.

I had to stay at Granny’s house the first night or two after the wreck, which was the last place I wanted to be. Dad stayed there too when he was there. The twins stayed with Ginny, and Jamie went to Shirley and Walt Denton’s. While she was there, Walt and Shirley noticed a red streak running down her leg from one sore to another. They immediately grabbed her up and rushed her to the emergency room in Benton. The doctors and nurses gathered around her leg trying to figure out what they were looking at, with the first thought being blood poisoning, and then one doctor called for a wash cloth with some soap on it. The red steak washed right off. Scottie had drawn the red streak on her leg with a crayon.

Mom had to sleep sitting up and had to swallow her pride when needing help in the bathroom, including brushing her false teeth. That job fell on Linda and Dad, for the most part, and Aunt Bernice Muzzarelli, Mom's sister, on occasion. Linda became the Chief Cook except for the first week after the wreck. That week we had a “maid” help out. Her name was Val Quigley. Since Dad and Mom couldn’t afford to pay her more than a week, the cooking, housework and wash fell on us. Linda would dole out the chores when it came time to cook and she did most of the wash. She earned the title “Bossy” during those years, but being the firstborn, that is her nature anyway, and so she relished the opportunity to boss. We still have a lot of respect for what she had laid in her lap during that period of time, though. It’s a good thing because we didn’t much like being bossed by a sister. She’s still bossy, but we laugh at it now.

There were so many “ironies” that day, but I now know it was God doing His thing. He didn’t stop the car wreck from happening, but He and His angels were involved in so many aspects and helped us get through it. Mom wanted nothing more than to raise her eight kids and God refused to let the devil take that opportunity away. If the devil had his way, our spiritual lives would have turned out altogether different because Mom was our greatest spiritual influence.

One good thing that came out of that experience is that we all became good cooks. Once Mom healed from her shattered shoulders, she had two surgeries three weeks apart and so she had to recuperate from those before she could resume her household chores. When she was all well, she went to work, so we continued to do the cooking. She would leave us recipes to follow or else a list of what to fix. Linda was the head chef. She also helped take care of Mom including taking care of certain of Mom's hygiene matters. I never fully appreciated what Linda did during those months. And she never complained about her duties.

Since we had no computers, video games, cell phones to talk on or text message, etc., we had to make our own entertainment. We had a tv, but daytime television shows could not hold our interest, except for cartoons on Saturdays. We built a bike ramp in a neighbor’s yard and jumped from it with our bicycles. Many a time we landed wrong and it’s surprising that any of us can have kids. It was especially painful when riding a boy’s bicycle.

The twins hung out with Janet Cullins, who lived two doors down. They would make a long running dash for her house and jump the picket fence. They never missed clearing it, which was fortunate because each of the wooden pickets were pointed at the top.

We rode our bicycles all over town and on the outskirts of town. Many of the streets we rode were still wooded back then, such as north 27^th street and Fishers Lane. We would either ride our bikes or walk to the park where there was a skating rink and outside “dance hall,” which was somewhat like a large gazebo. I remember finding a letter there that was very despondent and indicated the person wanted to die, then it wasn’t long after that that a girl from Woodlawn did kill herself. I often wondered if it was she that wrote that letter. I was too young to realize that I should have given it to someone in authority, not that the letter was signed. But now, in hindsight, it would have been important to pass it onto an adult.

A carnival was set up at the park every summer back in those days, and one day I went with someone I no longer remember to the park in the morning when nothing much was going on, and while we were milling around, we heard a man scream out in pain. We looked over at him where he had been working on the machine that ran the carnival ride and he had gotten his hand caught in it and it had cut his hand to the bone. That was something I had never seen before and it was quite upsetting. He was rushed to the hospital by other carnival workers and we went home all shook up.

We still lived on 20^th street when we started high school and there were many days when we had to walk home from school in terrible weather. The school librarian would take us to school a big part of the time. I can’t remember her name, but she was Billy Padgett’s aunt. Billy Padgett was my age and lived across the street. He became my boyfriend the summer between my 8^th grade year and partway into our Freshman year in high school. As an adult, he became an actor, often in commercials, and had a speaking part in The Big Red Dog, and visited on Sesame Street. He was also in Broadway shows in Chicago.

We had a friend who lived down the street. I think her name was Linda Darnell. She became a good friend but one day announced she was going to move to Viet Nam because her dad was being sent there. A few weeks later she said those plans were cancelled because war had broken out and it was too dangerous for the family to go there. That was our first knowledge that Viet Nam even existed. Even then, we thought it didn’t concern us. It would eventually concern us because our brother Butch, Marilyn’s husband, Larry Cockrum, and Jamie’s husband, Dale Pearson, all served in that war. Dale was in the navy and saw no action. It really took its toll on Butch and Larry, though. It changed their lives forever and possibly shortened their lives.

Back to the subject of living on 20^th Street, Casey fell down the front porch steps of that house when he was just a toddler. The steps were concrete and he hit his head on the edge of one of them, needing stitches. That was just a mini-crisis but he was the baby so it upset all of us.

Jamie also had a little accident in the house on 20th Street. She was roller skating through the house and roller skated down the basement stairs. Carolyn watched her do it and it scared her so bad that she froze. She couldn’t go help Jamie because she couldn’t move. As it turned out, again by the grace of God, Jamie was fine. So what if she has a tic (Just kidding).

Also while living on 20th Street, Dickie Summers came to stay all night with Butch one time. I mention this because a couple of years later Dickie died from a brain tumor. This was the same Dickie Summers that I walked to Kindergarten with and who was only three days older than I.

Dad’s twin sister, Edna’s, daughter, Sheila, came to live with us several months, or maybe even a year, while we were living on 20th Street. She didn’t like her mother’s new husband, who was a Benton policeman. One day we all went to the swimming pool at the park. Sheila was with us. I decided to try swimming in the deep water so I stayed close to the edge. However, I got a little too far out and was in the lifeguard's blind spot. I was going under for the third time when Sheila reached out and pulled me to the side. I laid on the side of the pool and cried. Again, God was with me.

16th Street
We moved from 20th Street to 16th Street about 1963 or 1964. It was a two-story house situated behind a service station that faced Broadway. We were living there when Linda got her driver’s license. Dad bought a German car called a Kaiser for her to drive us around in. Sharon didn’t get her license until later years and neither did I. I don’t remember when Butch got his license. We had a lot of fun in that Kaiser. Linda liked to jump this dip in the road on 23rd Street, and taking the dip fast like that would make us swallow our stomachs. We loved it. The car would occasionally not start, but Dad taught us what to do when that happened. We had to jiggle this little wire under the hood. I’m sure that was quite a sight to anyone watching us.

Mom worked at Bracy’s grocery store on Broadway, which was near our house. That was really convenient for us for when we needed to ask her a question about how to cook something. She was starting to earn the fruits of her labor (in childbirth) because we older kids were doing much of the cooking and cleaning. That was one situation where being one of the “big kids” didn’t pay off.

Jamie was a cheerleader in the 6^th grade. She fell off of the monkey bars one day at school and became incoherent. Somehow she made it home, though.

When Jamie as in 8th grade and innocent about the occults, one of her friends decided to have a seance. They were having  sleepover at the house of the Supt. of Schools and his wife. Here's the story as Jamie tells it: We got in a circle and did the seance. Nancy Shields wanted to talk to a former teacher of hers that had died. Nothing happened and we went on to something else. Pretty soon her phone rang and she answered it. She turned white as a sheet and started crying. Her parents came home about that time and asked her what was wrong. She told them about the seance and that the person on the phone said he was her former teacher. I don’t remember how long the conversation on the phone lasted. Her parents said it was probably a neighbor that had overheard what we were doing and were just playing a trick on her. It was summer and the windows were open. But I never heard one way or the other if that was actually the case. I remember she was not convinced and was very shook up.

18^th Street

We moved from 16th Street where Ford Square is now into a house on a corner of South 18^th Street. We lived there for about a year. A man had committed suicide in the bathroom of that house at some time prior to our moving in (of course). I thought that would bother me, but it didn’t. Not too much happened while we were living at this house. I was dating John at the time. Linda got married to Ronnie Martin in 1965 and moved to Belleville.  

During my senior year of high school I worked at WMIX through the Office Occupations program at high school. I got the job not only because of my qualifications but because of my honesty. The one who did the hiring called the school and asked for the names of a couple of the best students in the secretarial training program and my name and the name of a pretty, middle-class classmate came up. It so happened that the lady doing the hiring had a daughter in our secretarial classes. She told her mother that I got my grades honestly but the other girl got hers by cheating. So, I got the job. I had to take dictation over the phone from John R. Mitchell, the owner of the radio station and the one who founded the Mitchell Museum. The museum was in the planning stages in those days and I would have to write to some of the artists. He would even go visit them and stay in their homes a day or two. By the end of my year at WMIX, I was writing commercials. One of the salesmen threw a fit when I left because he thought I was doing such a good job and was bringing in business. I loved writing commercials and it came easy for me.

I became engaged while working at WMIX and one day I went and picked up the bridesmaid’s dress, which I had purchased out of my own money, and I put it in the closet at work. Someone saw the box and moved it up against the trash can and then the trash people came and picked it up with the rest of the trash, thinking they were supposed to. The dress was so lightweight that the box felt empty. At the end of the day I went to get the dress and it was gone. I thought someone was playing a prank and it took a long time to convince me it was no joke. Then we figured out that the trash men had taken the dress and I had to go to Southtown to the owner’s house to find the dress. We were prepared to go to the dump and scout around, but they always burned what they took, so we didn’t have much hope. Mr. Kendricks, the owner of the trash business, lived in a little, run-down white house in those days and he answered the door of his house. I told him my story and he told me that the strangest thing had happened. He said the truck went to the dump and it was closed, so the truck returned. There was my box in the back of it. I thanked God and thanked Him. I knew it was a God thing.

19th Street
We didn’t live on 18th Street very long before Dad and Mom bought the house on the corner of 19th and Logan. It was a two-story house with a basement and front porch. I was living there when I got engaged just before Christmas of 1965 and I got married in June of 1966. I was still working at WMIX but quit work at the end of the summer to move to Johnson City, Tennessee where my husband would attend Milligan Christian College in preparation for being a secondary education teacher and coach.

Sharon was still living in Collinsville. Frankie, her husband, worked in East St. Louis and went to college in the evenings to learn to be a chemical engineer. Sharon was away from the family with two little kids, was alone most of the time, and wasn’t even 20 years old.

Linda and Ron lived in Belleville where he managed an apartment complex called “Blackberry Run.” He was also an accountant. Linda got pregnant while they were living there and had Keith Douglas. He was a beautiful, dark-headed, blue-eyed boy who liked to hold onto Ronnie’s finger when Ron would hold him. That’s the part I remember most. I didn’t get to see him much since I was in Tennessee, but then we got a letter saying Keith wasn’t doing well and that he kept turning blue. He had been born with a little heart abnormality, but the doctor said he would outgrow it and to treat him like a normal child. But then he caught a cold when he was three months old and went downhill from there. An autopsy was performed and they discovered that one of the main arteries of his heart was on the outside instead of where it belonged. John and I hadn’t planned on going to Mt. Vernon for Christmas because of our financial situation, not realizing Keith was close to death, but somehow we managed it. I had really been homesick. As it turned out, Keith died in a St. Louis hospital less than a week before Christmas and we buried him two days before Christmas at the age of four months. John and I were able to attend the funeral and then at Linda’s request, we stayed with her and Ron for a few days following the funeral. I think the timing of our trip to Mt. Vernon was a God thing.

John and I only spent a year in Johnson City, Tennessee before we ran out of money and he transferred to SIU in Edwardsville. We lived in Troy. I worked under the school’s civil service program and John also had a part-time job with the college’s engineer. While we were living in an apartment in Troy, I got pregnant. Even though I was not quite 19, I was elated. I never had a sick day, but then one day I started bleeding and then I started cramping. The cramps were like labor pains. I had John call the doctor, but he just said for me to stay home with my feet propped up. I laid in bed having labor pains with nothing to help the pain all day long until I felt I couldn’t stand the pain any longer, and then I told John just to take me to the hospital in Wood River where I was supposed to eventually deliver. My thinking was that if I showed up there, they would have to examine me and they would see that I needed to stay there. So we started our trip there and it so happened that we were having one of the worst snow storms we had seen in years and years. We were fortunate enough to be able to travel a good part of the way behind a snow plow. When we got to the hospital, one of the nurses decided I wasn’t miscarrying and told us to go back home. The doctor was President of a Jewish Conference and he didn’t want to be bothered. And so we traveled back home in the snowstorm. I continued having pain for a while longer, then it stopped. I called the hospital to tell them I thought I had lost the baby, even though I hadn’t passed it, but the pain had stopped. They told me to come back to the hospital so they could examine me, and so we made the trip back through the snowstorm once again. They admitted me and gave me a pitcher to pee in and when I did, I passed a bluish little Wall child. Even though the head was big and the body was small, like they are at that age, and even though the baby was blue, I could still see that the shape of the head was like my husband's, giving it an identity and family resemblance. That was devastating for me. It was years before I could talk about it without crying. To add insult to injury, the nurses kept calling the loss an abortion. I chewed them out and told them not to use that term. They insisted it was the proper term, though the proper term was a spontaneous abortion, but I didn’t even like that term. The term made it sound like I purposely killed my baby when I wanted that baby more than anything else in the world. When a person has a miscarriage, there is no funeral, no sympathy cards, and no one wants to talk about it. It was very difficult for me to work through the pain because of that. As it turned out, Sharon and Jamie are the only ones of us girls who didn’t lose their first child. I noticed from tv that the nurses now call an early pre-born death a "spontaneous miscarriage."

I got pregnant again a year later and was so sick that I was put on two kinds of nausea medication and even then I could only eat an apple a day. I had to go in for vitamin shots until the nausea passed, which was between 3 and 4 months along. But that was a good indication that the baby was taking what she needed. The nausea passed for the most part, but I still didn’t feel well during the pregnancy and had to quit work. John graduated in December of 1968 and began to teach at Smithton, Illinois, in January of 1969. Diana was born in May of that year. I went into labor about the time she was due and went to the doctor on a Friday, but the doctor said I needed to go home and wait until I was more than two fingers along. And so I continued with the labor pains for the next few days until early Sunday morning I told John to take me to the emergency room and give me something for the pain because I couldn’t stand it any longer and I hadn’t had any sleep since the Friday I started the pains. They were occurring every 15 minutes. The nurses immediately prepped me for childbirth and I told them that the doctor was going to be mad because he said I wasn’t ready to be admitted, but they ignored me and put me in a room. They gave me a shot for the pain, and then when the pain subsided, I realized I was hungry and so they gave me something to eat, which they weren’t supposed to do right after giving me a pain shot, and I began to throw up. I threw up so much that they had to put me on oxygen. One of the nurses accidentally broke my water and told me I would for sure have the baby within 24 hours, which didn’t happen. I was given so many shots that they ran out of places on my butt to give them and then started with the arms. My strategic area was so black and blue that the nurses no longer wanted to test me to see how far along I was, so they called in a nun to do it and she was brutal. The doctor came in that afternoon to tell me that the baby’s heart was beating too fast and that they were going to schedule a caesarean section for Tuesday. To this day I don’t know why they waited, but they did. While doing the surgery, I could feel the pain. It felt like they were playing tug of war with my guts. But I was so groggy and ignorant about what was normal and what wasn’t that I just tolerated it. The spinal shot numbed my legs, but not my torso. I must have been in shock while in the recuperating room because I was awake and was so cold that I couldn’t stand it. I asked for a blanket and finally convinced the nurses to give me one, but they seemed real put out because I was interrupting their conversation. When I asked for another blanket, I was told that I had already been given one. My body temperature dropped to about 89, it was later discovered.

But even with all I had been through, I met a woman who was worse off. She had her baby the natural way, but her spine separated from her pelvis and she was in a wheelchair crying because I had had surgery and yet was walking around. I also met a lady who had her babies 10 months apart. I left there counting my blessings. A year later I told the doctor I felt like I was losing my mind, that I was anxious and couldn’t put my finger on the reason. He had an instant answer without even looking at my folder. He told me it was because of what I had been through having Diana. He promised he would never do that again and would give me sodium pentathol next time. And he did. I didn't wake up for 3 days.

We had lived in an apartment over a furniture store in Belleville for a couple of months before Diana was born, then moved to an apartment in Millstadt. There was a walk-in closet off of the bedroom and I converted it into a baby room. We lived in that apartment about a year, then moved to a rental home on the corner of a busy street in Millstadt. We were living there when Little John was born. I had a birthday party for Diana on a Saturday when the family could come up, and later that evening I started having some pains. The following day I went to the hospital to let them know I was in labor and the pains were getting worse. I wasn’t supposed to go into labor because of the scar on the inside that doesn’t heal quite as well as the scar on the outside in the case of cesarean births. I had a vertical cut and those are more dangerous. I was put in a room on a gurney and told to read a magazine. I was scared silly because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in labor and the pains were intense. A nurse came in long enough to tell me I was in the wrong hospital and the doctor was on vacation. I knew I wasn’t in the wrong hospital because I had had my lab work done there at the doctor’s suggestions. He told me they had better facilities for a caesarean birth. Finally a nurse came in and asked if she could feel one of my labor pains. She put her hand on my stomach and the next thing I knew, I was rolling down the hall while they were pumping my stomach on the way. They didn’t have time for the usual enemas. I didn’t like swallowing that tube, but I didn’t like enemas either, and I think I preferred the tube. I got sodium pentathol all right, just like the doctor promised, but I couldn’t wake up for the best part of 3 days. I wanted to name Little John Jason, but John caught me under the influence of drugs and convinced me to name the baby after him.

Dad nearly gets in a fight while taking the youth group somewhere.

Another time Dad threw a guy over a fence.

Linda and Ron come to visit us in Tennessee and so did Butch. He goes to war. (move up)

Linda has Scottie in 1968. He grew up to be a movie producer in L.A.

Bobby Uhls and Brenda move in with Mom and Dad for a few months.

Marilyn married Larry and Carolyn married Ed.

The earthquake.

Our car got stolen. (Somebody needs to fill me in on the details.)

Mom and Ginny’s fishing trip.

Mom threatens Dad and Donald by pretending to have a gun when she thought they were burglars.

Highlight of our lives: Jamie meets Dale (our unsung hero) at work, becomes his wife. :)

Carolyn's kids born. (I need her stories.)

Brandyn saves Mychelle from drowning and makes the news.

In 1973 we moved to Nashville. We had the shell of the house built (brick) and practically camped out in it for the first few years. No carpet, plaster on the walls or kitchen cabinets. Free standing sink and storage cabinet. Work table.

1976 surgery for removal of a cyst. Colitis. Warned I wouldn’t make it to 40 without a hysterectomy. I made it to about 33. I had two surgeries that year. The other one was for a tumor on my thyroid.

Diana and Little John on the horse at Marilyn’s.

Adam and then Andrew are born.

Andrew gets stitches at Carolyn’s. Cat story and shampoo story. Crying at his birthday party because Adam didn't get presents.

Dad, Little John and Adam on the lake when a storm comes up.

Marilyn loses babies then Larry

I need your stories after you left home.