Dinner on the Ground

This was written a few years ago and aired on Georgia Public Radio in 2006.

It was hot and muggy the Sunday Linda and I walked up the brick path to the old church in Savannah, Georgia. It was Homecoming and we were coming home. Our friend, Allison, had been invited to preach the sermon, and Linda and I were there to hear her. The setting held special meaning for all three of us. I had grown up in the church; Allison had arrived as a teenager and found her calling and her future husband there. When Linda was a child, her aunt had led the choir and she had memories of visiting at Easter to hear “Low in the Grave He Lay, Jesus My Savior.”

It had been close to thirty years since I’d set foot in the church, the last time being for the baptism of my eldest, now twenty nine. Sadly, the church I’d grown up in, married in, and christened my baby in had burned at some point after I left home, but a new one, larger but almost an exact replica, was now taking its place. The original building had a rich history. It had been used as a hospital during the Civil War, and what later became the choir loft had earlier been built for slaves who were invited to hear the Word of God, but not in any kind of proximity to the white folks. The current church was a testimony to what a modern church could be, open to all, at least theoretically, and filled to capacity at not one, but two, Sunday morning services each week.

I was surprised at how I felt as I took in the church and its surroundings. My chest was full of memories and my head resonated with the realization that I was stepping where I’d stepped as a little child, a young bride, and a new mother.

We were on the lookout for Allison, who had come early to preach at the nine o’clock service. We found her in the social hall, drinking a Diet Coke, and resting up for her next performance, looking not at all like our friend in her clerical garb. She also looked hot. Heat was a big issue to our mid 50’s menopausal minds and bodies, and we were worried that the stalwarts were going to win out and dinner would, indeed, be served outside, although thankfully no longer laid out, picnic fashion, on the ground, as it had for Homecomings a hundred years ago. I had already been chided by Linda for wearing stockings, something we purported to be against because of feminist issues. In actuality, our stand had more to do with queen-sized versus regular, control top as opposed to sheer, never mind how they hold in the heat.

We took a tour of the social hall where my wedding reception had been held. I couldn’t quite get my bearings until I found the large room where my new husband and I had fed each other wedding cake and considered a future that we never could have foretold. In the back, next to the bathroom, I found an old picture that captured my big brother and me sharing a crowded front pew in what must have been a contrived photo shoot since my brother never would have sat on the front pew, and definitely never would have allowed me to sit with him and his buddies; and there was my best friend, Francine, across the sanctuary, appearing forlorn without me by her side. As I looked closer, I could see my father sitting in the back, wearing a bow tie that I still remember, quietly offering support from behind the scenes. That bow tie was the only ostentatious thing about my daddy.

When I couldn’t locate my mother in the picture, I decided that it was most likely she who had coordinated the picture taking, and she who was working the shutter on the Kodak. When I was a child, ours was a family that, like so many others, virtually lived at the church. It was not only our Sunday morning, but our Wednesday night, and Saturday afternoon, too.

It was getting close to time for the eleven o’clock service so Linda and I made our way into the sanctuary in order to get good seats. Settling in, I couldn’t help but question why God had allowed the uncomfortable antebellum wooden pews to survive the fire when so little else had. Watching Linda open her fan with a flourish and produce several of her mother’s linen hankies in readiness for the heat and what we were looking to Allison to provide for us, that being a helpful sermon and a Good Cry, I was reminded of how artfully my friend had mastered the Steel Magnolia, Faded Flower of the South, persona.

While I mindlessly gazed at the other church-goers taking their seats, Linda squinted at a hand-written sign a few rows up, a sign that sat atop a pile of bulletins. “Marcia, what does that sign say?” she asked in her exceptionally Southern and somewhat loud voice. I was forced to inform her in my not as melodic but even louder voice, “It says, ‘Large Print’, the sign says ‘Large Print’.” We made good use of the hankies as we stifled the titters and snorts that came with the understanding that the “Large Print” sign needed to be printed in yet larger print in order for some of us to read it.

The service began with the preacher making announcements and asking for prayer requests. At some point before the offering plate was passed, he told the congregation that, because it was Homecoming, he was going to continue with the tradition of having folks call out the names of people, living or dead, who had been meaningful to them in some way. Linda’s mama’s handkerchief got a second round of use when I heard someone, someone I didn’t know, call out my dead daddy’s name. Chasing after my drooling eyes and nose with the scented linen, I knew I was heading toward a memorable memorial meltdown. I was a menopause-driven train careening into the station without benefit of either brakes or Arrid Extra Dry.

Just as Allison was being introduced, her many credentials touted, a little boy behind Linda began to squirm and complain, his father unable to quiet him. Before I knew it, Linda had turned around and was saying something to the poor little child, whispering from behind her fan. When I asked her later, she told me she’d promised him a cookie after the service if he’d simmer down, but his look of absolute terror during the entire sermon made me doubt her explanation.

Allison addressed the congregation and spoke from her soul, telling stories and weaving her message without really preaching. She made reference to the place and time of our childhood, a place so beautiful it flirted with magical, a time so finite, it, like my daddy’s bow tie, should have been captured in a snapshot. As she ultimately made her compelling point, sharing her personal life pain to heal others, I was reminded of how successful we three, Allison, Linda, and I, have been in life, if not in love.

Before the benediction, the preacher made the announcement that the Homecoming dinner had been moved inside to the social hall because of the rain that had started up during the service. Linda and I did a mental, hankie-embellished, high five, thankful that our hormone depleted and therefore perspiration-prone bodies would be spared the Savannah humidity as we continued to support Allison by partaking in the pot-luck delicacies provided by the church members. I was particularly impressed with myself as Friend of the Visiting Preacher, and therefore special guest, as Linda and I followed Allison to the front of the lunch line, ahead of the people who had brought the food.

In spite of my iffy emotional state, I successfully maneuvered the lunch line, basking in Allison’s and my dead daddy’s reflected auras, bypassing the lesser folks as I dipped into the macaroni and cheese, potato salad, chicken tenders, and honey mustard sauce, little of which was likely homemade for this new millennium Homecoming meal. Continuing with my all-yellow luncheon theme, I selected banana pudding for my dessert.

Keeping my eye on the clergy table where, for once, I would be sitting, I successfully traversed the crowded social hall with its portable furniture moved in from out at the last wet moment until I came upon a little boy, not the same little boy that Linda had earlier terrorized, but another little boy. This particular little boy had somehow managed to get ahead of me in the lunch line, a transgression he would live to regret. Just as he was digging in to his baked beans, his fruit salad, his spaghetti bake, my karma met his as the toe of my high-heeled shoe, sweatily sliding upon my stockinged foot, caught the leg of his hastily-placed chair, and, in slow motion, I felt myself going down in what can only be described as a noteworthy fall from grace.

I have a confession. I am a faller. I have a history of falling. It’s as if I have a life-long inner ear condition that causes ditzy dizziness at the most inopportune times. While a college freshman, I fell at the University of Georgia, attempting to cross the street from Brumby Hall to the Krystal, carrying my drawing board, a fall significant enough to make me change my major. I’ve fallen in the dark; I’ve fallen in the light. One time, I stepped in a dog dish and slid across my wet kitchen floor, pulling off an extremely painful but almost perfect split to absolutely no applause. Now, I’d fallen in a church social hall in the midst of sweet memories, gentle ghosts, and terrorized little boys.

Linda, who was behind me, says that all she saw was yellow everywhere and macaroni in the little boy’s hair. Allison, who was in front of me, says that, when she heard the commotion, she was ninety-nine percent sure it was me. What I remember is the little boy’s father trying to talk me off the floor as I attempted to clean the honey mustard sauce out of the treads of his child’s pristine sneakers. I also remember potato salad and banana pudding painting a grisly Pollock-like picture on the linoleum and people walking around it all, kindly trying to act like they hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

In retrospect, I have to say that my Homecoming visit was a good one. It gave me the opportunity to reunite with good friends, departed family, and lost childhood. It was certainly memorable, not only for me, but also for others. So what if gracefulness is not my strong suit. That’s okay. We all have something to offer and I’m glad I when I can be of help.

And what a help I was when, on that one particular Sunday in over a century of many such Sundays, I was able to contribute something that only someone with my special gifts could manage. It makes me proud that, at future Homecomings at my old church, as folks gather round the table laden with yellow food, they just might remember the stained and sweaty lady who gave her all in an attempt to bring back the tradition of dinner on the ground, and their blessing, in my honor, might include something akin to “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I Knew He Had to Grow up Some Time, But Did It Have to Be Today?

I stand in the driveway as Billy departs, pulling all of his worldly goods behind him (or, at least what he perceives to be the good stuff). He is joining his older sister three thousand miles away in Oregon. Since I have already lost one child to the Pacific Northwest, this doesn't seem quite fair.

Billy calls his small caravan "The Big Lug"; an allusion to the immense, unwieldy bolt that attaches the trailer to his car, and a name that also fits his often genial, and sometimes inert, demeanor. I am sobbing and my heart is breaking. At the same time, however, I'm envisioning the cleaning and rearranging of my living room; the room that he took over for the five months that he came back home to live with me, filling it with wires and circuits, Grateful Dead bootlegged tapes, a vibrating chair, and his big old smelly shoes - items all now being precariously hauled away in "The Big Lug" (by the big lug), thank God.

How can I own two such contradictory sentiments at the same time? I think that it has to do with that parent balance thing, how much you give how much you save for yourself. Although I'll miss him greatly, my little boy in his man's body, it will be nice to have my tidy, female life back.

It's not like he had never left. He had matriculated (and I use that term loosely) at a State University a couple of hours away, but, while not being underfoot, he remained within arm's reach. However, after four years, with no degree in evidence, his father and I agreed that he needed to come home, notably to my house since my ex-husband had his new wife and his new life. I, of course, was still primarily "Mom", and therefore, always available for found kittens and lost souls.

The edict to come home was tolerated only with great angst. Billy would have liked to have stayed in his comfortable college town surroundings with his friends but without the inconvenience of having to go to class. The problem was that he couldn't do that without our support. As always, money spoke, or, in this case, the withholding of money said it all. We finally starved him out.

I thought having him move back in with me, without the pressure of both work and school, might allow him to find some academic direction at our local community college, but that was not to be. After a couple of weeks of my best not-so-subtle brainwashing techniques, he finally told me, "Mom, I wish I could make myself want to finish college but I just can't right now."

So we came to a short-term compromise. He would find a job, deliver his fourteen-year-old sister to wherever she needed to be, save us from the boogyman, if he ever showed his ugly face (perhaps tie him to the vibrating chair?), and help out around the house. I, in turn, would board and feed and put up with him for free. In addition, he was to save his money for whatever life he decided to have in the future.

I knew I was on dangerous ground. What if he became too comfortable?
He might not ever leave. My cooking is pretty foul (even when it's not chicken) but I was offering it for free.

I need not have worried. He was obviously miserable, stuck in that never-never land of hometown four years after high school. All of his close friends had moved on, and the people with whom he worked in the local factory had little to offer someone who had seen the collegiate equivalent of Pa-ree. In addition, he was once again living with his mother, who thinks a late night is staying up for Ally McBeal.

He hated the assembly-line job, which was no surprise. He is very much a social creature and, to his mother's unbiased mind, a creative genius. The tedium and the isolation wore away at him even more quickly than I thought they would. Of course, my hope had been that he would take the blue-collar experience and turn it toward some ambition to finish college. Instead, he decided to move to Oregon!

I'll never forget the call. He reached me during his break at work. "Mom, will you be real disappointed in me if I move to Oregon with Melissa?"

I first wondered what his sister would think about the idea. She had her own life and struggles. Putting those concerns aside, I responded with my best motherly advice. "Billy, I won't be disappointed in you at all." (In fact, I was a bit jealous that I didn't have the courage to do something that outrageous, but I chose not to tell him that). "However, I will be disappointed for you if you can't create a good life for yourself. I just wish you had a college degree. It would make things so much easier." I didn't think that it was a good time to remind him that his sister, with her college degree, was currently waiting tables in a Eugene restaurant. I did, however, point out to him that there are factories in Oregon too, and that a move wouldn't necessarily protect him from low paying, tedious jobs. In addition, I warned him that I wouldn't be able to bail him out financially, for his sake as much as mine.

I know it's going to be so hard for him, this child of video games and creature comforts. He will, most likely, have to hit bottom and I'll need to lend him, not money as I have in the past, but a deaf ear. Of course, a bad time is better than no time, a hard life better than no life, which is what he would have had if he had taken the easy route and stayed with me. I am proud of him for having the courage to take that long trek out of his mother's reach.

In spite of his misery, Billy was a fine companion. In fact, his company was so good that I found myself turning down social engagements to do things with him. No one is as much fun as my irreverent, quirky son is. He made me watch movies that I wouldn't have watched on my own, with American History X being my favorite. He introduced me to web sites and technical innovations I will never be able to find or resurrect now that he is gone. He even got me hooked on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, something out of character for me, since I normally stay pretty much within the confines of HGTV (oh yeah, that and Ally McBeal). It got to the point where I was a little disappointed when he would set up a date with a girlfriend from college when she came through town. The least they could do would be to stay home and watch Regis with me!

Conversely, he could be a real pain. He certainly made his presence known, this male in an all-female house (even my dog and cat are girls). He belched, he slurped, he left a trail of boy trash - paper cups full of melted ice, Rolling Stone magazines, and dirty socks. At one point I told him, "Billy, I am not your maid." His droll response was, "It's a good thing because you're not very good at it."

It was, most definitely, time for him to go.

A couple of minutes after he pulls out of the driveway, my phone rings. It's Billy on his cell phone. "Well, I'm gone!" he asserts, assaulting me with the deeper meaning of that simple statement. Only two thousand, nine hundred, ninety-five miles (and his whole life) still to go. As I wipe my hand across my face to dry my tears, I keep wishing that my son were heading west with an MBA from Harvard. Instead, he is armed only with his unformed dreams and his untapped talents to face the world without his Mama. I say a prayer for his good journey and go back into the house.

As I stand looking at the mess that he left behind, I am, once again, reduced to tears with the bittersweet realization that Billy's now removed stereo equipment and entertainment center have left a big hole in my living room and in my heart.

Wait a minute! Come to think of it, I have a plant that will look great in that corner. I'll just water it and give it some fertilizer. All it needs is a little mothering. All I need is to do a little mothering. Good-bye, Billy. I love you.

This One's for You, Billy

I couldn’t possibly be pregnant. I already had a perfectly good baby.

We were living in your grandfather’s house, sleeping in the guest room that shared a wall with Doc’s giant Magnavox TV, which he kept ratcheted up to about 1000 decibels because he was mostly deaf. On the other side of the other wall was Melissa’s crib, and outside our window was Henry, howling out his confusion and exasperation at being banned from the house. There was many a night I could be seen climbing out the window to throw something at the dog to hush him up without having to walk my nightgown-clad body past your grandfather in the den watching Johnnie Carson. Through it all, your father just continued to saw logs. To this day, I can’t for the life of me figure out how I could have possibly gotten pregnant, but pregnant I got.

Born on the thirteenth of March, exactly two years and ten days after Melissa, you were a sweet baby, cute though rather odd looking with your cone shaped head from being so big and perhaps stuck in the birth canal for a bit too long. You were also an easy baby. After just one night of sleeping in Melissa’s room (“Mama, the baby’s crying!”), we moved you into the living room of our tiny house, where you stayed until we finally enclosed the carport to accommodate Daddy’s office.

By the time we moved into the big house, you and Melissa were pretty much inseparable, going to Children’s Friend each weekday, playing outside in the afternoon and watching C.H.I.P.S. and Night Rider in the evening. I was your kindergarten teacher and it was during that time you buddied up with Chris (like a lawn) Moore and a couple more little scalawags with whom you remained friends throughout high school. I loved being your teacher and your mama at the same time. I thought you were just about the cleverest kindergartener ever to build a block tower and then knock it over.

I still remember the drawings you did as a little boy, airplanes with prodigious amounts of cloud-like smoke spewing from their innards, and little round cars, often with one flat tire, which I think had typically been shot out. I now look back and wonder if those gimpy automobiles offered a glimpse into your personality and view of life, as if you expected good things seldom to be perfect. That probably came from having Melissa as your big sister. Remember the time when you watched that scary movie and she materialized and startled you at the top of the stairs? You were so horrified that you refused to go upstairs by yourself for the longest time. Putting my picture in that locket and that locket around your grimy little neck was most likely my finest moment as a parent. No boogie people could have survived a gander at that face and you knew it.

Your earliest birthday parties were in tandem with Melissa’s, mainly because I was cheap and tired. I particularly remember those at Dry Lake Park and Burger King. However, your most memorable party, not counting those as a teenager I don’t even want to think about, had to have been the spend-the-night one when the partiers tried to turn over Dianne’s mini van just after dark and then flew the balsa wood airplanes in the front yard at four in the morning. Was that the same one where Molly sat naked on the dining table during the birthday-candle-blowing-out?

On the Molly topic, it was when Molly came along that your life changed and I began to catch a glimpse of the man (and father) you would become. After getting over your disappointment about not having a little brother, you and she developed a bond that remains to this day. Just as Melissa helped form you, you did the same for Molly.

Notice your hand here. You
are making sure Molly doesn't
fall off the porch.

Despite that good old Warner Robins tradition, you were never much interested in sports. You played Little League and were pretty good; however, soccer drove you nuts as those other little boys just ran all over everywhere and didn’t stay in their assigned positions. The idea of random shenanigans seldom got in the way of your logical thinking and that hasn’t changed.

In middle school, when you halfheartedly joined the football team, I remember going to a game and complaining to your coach that he wasn’t letting you play. He told me every time you got to the front of the line and it looked like you might actually have to go onto the field, you’d disappear to the back. Again, to your way of thinking, being on the team was enough, especially since you got to wear that great green uniform. Actually playing, on the other hand, could have lead to injury.

Speaking of uniforms and perhaps a different type of machismo, you didn't fare particularly well in the one ROTC class you took in high school either, the one you failed, partially because, on the one day you deigned to wear that uniform, you sported a t-shirt which offered the notion that one should Play Naked Lacrosse in bold letters under it.

To this day, you are one of the few heterosexual men I know who isn’t interested in sports, and, in fact, you appear to consider this to be a badge of honor. When you moved to Portland, you did join a kickball team, which you continue to enjoy, at least the beer drinking part of it. It did turn out, however, that playing in a co-ed league was mostly just a ruse for meeting women, and we have kickball (at least in part) to thank for Mary and Cami.

I recall once, when you were around fourteen, you told me that I needed to make you tougher. We were standing in the kitchen; I remember it well. I felt so sad, so insufficient, so unable to do what you'd asked of me. I couldn’t play golf or throw a ball or even pee standing up. But, you know, like most things, it turned out just the way it should. Even though neither of us had what it took to make you into the Incredible Hulk, you turned out to be tough in all the ways that are important. You are steadfast and kind and loving and funny, ready to make a joke when you sister is being wheeled into surgery, determined to be at her bedside when she returns. You are a partner to Mary and a wonderful father to Cami. You are your own person, content to be the basement guy, happy with your wires and connections, caretaker of drunks and fools. You were definitely born into the right family.

Finally, since I do usually think of you in one of those t-shirts you still wear (and wear and wear), my final word on the Billy-factor will have to be that you are like one of your shirts: typically unconventional, occasionally tacky, and often spouting something outlandish. But, oh, what a comfort you are.

Don't Move Pat. He Got Run Over by a Fire Truck

Difficulty and Delight in Soliciting Family History

This was written about ten years ago. Of all the people in the story, only three of us are still living. For those who have passed on, including the dog, their voices have been silenced and their stories are no longer available to us.

It's Thanksgiving morning and I drive the sixty miles to the retirement home where my eighty-four-year-old mother lives. We, together, then travel another one hundred forty miles to the town where she gave birth to my brother and me. We go there to share the holiday with my father's sisters and their husbands. We will retrace our steps this afternoon so that we can sleep in our own beds tonight.
This assemblage is all that is left of my parents' generation in my small family, and the planning has been fraught with angst and last minute changes of heart. My mother has been sick and has recently fallen. She commits, is then ambivalent, finally deciding to attend at the last minute, afraid that she will miss what may be her last visit with the group intact. My father had three sisters, all still going strong, the baby being a mere eighty-three. The two who married have husbands who, God willing, will soon attain the age of ninety. Although small in number and now in stature, they are intrepid souls, each placing one resolute foot before the other as another holiday season rolls around at breakneck speed. At my callow age, I am the only one who drives with any impunity so it makes sense for me to deliver my mother.

I have a hidden agenda. Although I am happy (and sad) to see my aging relatives, aware that these gatherings have a limited future, I am here for information. I want the scoop and time is of the essence.

I have only recently become interested in oral history, in family lore, too late to ask my father. Having talked my poor mother mute with requests for stories of her childhood, I am moving in for the kill on my only link to my patriarchal side. My quarry are unsuspecting as they masticate their Chex Mix and drink their Bloody Mary's, their thoughts centered on survival issues like social security, high prices and poor service.

I point to an old family portrait, hoping to spark a natural segue. As we all gather in a corner trying to look, I become confused and a bit claustrophobic. "Who is that?" "I don't know." "That's Granddaddy." "Which Granddaddy?" Adding to the befuddlement is the family penchant for reusing names. "That's Susie." "Which Susie?" "Is that me?" "No, you weren't even born yet." The people in the portrait gaze stolidly back at me, unmoved by my distress, people who, although still unnamed, look disconcertingly very much like us.
I haven't yet mentioned my objective for the day, nor have I produced the tape recorder. We have had some discussion about my digital camera, the consensus being that, with its preview and deletion capabilities, it is a good thing. That is until I mention that it works best when affiliated with a computer.

As we gather at the table, I get up the nerve to mention that I am interested in hearing the stories of my aunts' childhoods. My middle aunt, the one hosting our feast, says, with some vigor, "I have always said, if someone wanted to write stories, we have stories!" But before I can get my tape recorder out from under my chair, the talk turns to which aunt made the salad and is the meat cooked to everyone's taste. The uncles are contentedly eating, dabbing at their mouths, passing the bread. Thinking it might not be nice or smart to try to control the dinner conversation, I decide to hold off until dessert.

As we choose between rum cake and pecan pie, I lay the tape recorder on the table. It looks out of place on the snowy cloth, the black plastic defiling the aura of the autumnal centerpiece. My mother smiles encouragingly at my aunts, glad it is they for whom the recorder records and not she. They utter a collective sigh, as if steeling themselves for something they just can't seem to escape. Resorting to form, my middle aunt attempts to get things started, asserting, a bit protectively, that they had a wonderful father and a great childhood even though they were motherless and poor. My oldest aunt, the one who never married, looks vague and says that she can't remember much. The baby says that she just isn't good at telling stories. I ask specific questions, just trying to get the players straight. I learn that, after the death of their mother, an aunt and her son came to live with them. The son, their cousin, was like another brother to them and my daddy was glad to have an additional boy, a compatriot, in the house. After a few more helpful facts but no real stories, the talk turns to contemporary matters and we finish our meal by lining up to talk on the phone to my brother who is eight hundred miles away. I put away the tape recorder, pondering when I can schedule a return trip to talk to my father's sisters individually.

Making our way back to the den for coffee, I can tell my mother is tired and I think of the long drive ahead. It's time to take our leave. In gathering up my paraphernalia, I deposit the scorned tape recorder in the bottom of my bag. Before adding the digital camera, I show my youngest aunt the picture of my Labrador Retriever I'd taken just before leaving home, a practice shot to make sure the battery was charged and the disk had space for the family pictures I would surely take. As we begin heading toward the door in a sluggish throng, my aunt says, "I remember that we had animals. I had a dog named Diddiebycha (as in Did he bite ya?) and George" (her brother and my father) "had a cat named Black Cat Kitty." My middle aunt says, "I remember that too. George also had a big dog named Fritz. And Earle" (the cousin) "had a bulldog named Pat." A look of amusement settling around her eyes, she asks my other two aunts, "Do you remember the time George came home and found Pat in his bed with a note from Earl that said, 'Don't move Pat. He got run over by a fire truck.'" They nod, smiling, their faces rapt.

I perk up at the splendid story, wishing that I could dislodge the recorder from the bottom of my bag, but I'm afraid of breaking the spell. As they continue, I find that Pat survived being run over by the fire truck and my daddy endured the indignity of having a dog appropriate his bed. As if this were not enough, as if this story wasn't worth the trip and putting my poor relatives through a stressful and strange holiday get-together, my oldest aunt, the one who earlier couldn't remember, the one who never married, stands up, grasps a chair arm to gain her balance and announces with some surprise and a great deal of enthusiasm, "I had a goat!"

As we pass through the back door, sharing hugs and promises of future occasions, I am reminded why family is so important and why it's worth the time and energy to make these trips. I'm also reinforced in my sometimes misguided attempts to hear the stories of my antecedents and to share those stories with my own children. Although we have learned about the era of my father's youth in our history books, we know little about what it was like to live in that time in a family torn apart by illness and economic decline in a small town in South Georgia. We need to learn all we can about a certain motherless family, which happens to be our family, which was presided over by an overwhelmed father who loved his children and allowed them pets, including an injured bulldog in a boy's bed and a goat for a little girl who would never marry.

To Melissa

On the occasion of your thirty-fifth birthday,

You were my first big hope, a miracle I couldn't engineer all by myself. After months of trying and failing, the planets aligned, the perfect swimmer met the ready egg, and you were conceived. I still have the little piece of paper that says "gravindex positive, " a folded memento your grandfather's nurse handed me the day I knew it was true. Back then, there were no magic sticks to wet on in the privacy of your own bathroom; people had to make an appointment to find out. Daddy and I were lucky your grandfather was a doctor and we could get in quickly for a test. We were living in Greenville at the time so we must have traveled back to Warner Robins, with you as our secret, to keep the process all in the family.

I still remember the peppermint flavor of that summer as peppermints were what I used to stave off the nausea. I also recall looking at myself in the full-length mirror you took to Oregon years later. I stood sideways and sucked in my stomach and saw and felt the hard knot that was you. I wonder now at not being able to foresee that the mirror which afforded me my first look at you would one day accompany you to the place that would steal you away from me.

We called you Boogie as we watched you, already a member of the Allman Brothers Fan Club, grow in my belly. We named you after the song that was a reminder of the music your daddy loved so much, and something I, in turn, loved about him .

From the very beginning, you were your own little person, often inwardly focused, occasionally cranky (if you can imagine that) . Your need to create happened early on as we all recall your waking us up in the middle of the night asking where the scissors were. You accepted your siblings with resolve and some affection, taking on the mantle of oldest while still maintaining an air of being above it all, as if the promise had been that you would be the only one.

As a child, I remember your best friends as being boys, but what I'm recalling is most likely just that one summer, the summer of Greg and Sonny. You three were like a cyclone pulsating through the neighborhood, all grime and no homework. Some days, I couldn't tell you apart. You looked and smelled exactly the same.

When you became a teenager, with the height of your cock-a-doodle bangs signifying your mood, social endeavors dictated your days and nights but you still managed to do well in school and stay out of trouble (mostly). We had some issues with the car, the curfew, and that big party, but I could still count on you to snuggle up and ask me to scratch your back, and to put your big old feet in my lap when we watched television. Because you were my first teenager, I had to try to figure out how to continue to mother you after you thought it was no longer necessary. I still remember the times you were late enough for me to be scanning the driveway, mentally writing your very sad obituary, and I certainly haven't forgotten the rope and rubber gloves you used for climbing in and out of your second-story bedroom window.

It was while you were in college I began to realize how like my mother you are: intelligent, intense, and ready to travel to places I'd be afraid to go. The summer you and Molly Mitchell spent working in Yellowstone must have been a mighty one as it ended up changing your life. When you later told me you wanted to move to Oregon, I thought of it as a great adventure, never dreaming it would become your future (and to a great extent, mine).

Now you are a wife, a mother, a worker, a driver, a sewer, a maker, a coaxer, a car-seat buckler, and a cinematographer, but, thanks to Trevor, not a cook. You are also still a daughter to your daddy and me, and a sister to Billy and Molly, and a friend to those who are worthy of the relationship. I realized a couple of Christmases ago that you'd already bypassed me to become the family matriarch, making sure events happen with all the necessary ingredients, while the rest of us stumble around mouthing exhortations about what we would have done if we'd just had the time, the money, or if you had simply reminded us.

Being a mother yourself, I know you now understand what you mean to me. I can't imagine my life without you, and Miles and Georgia would tell you the same if they just had the words. We are talking one big deal, reciprocal, co-dependent relationship here.

And so, one heart supports new hearts, life goes on, and the family endures in spite of itself.

Transcripts of The Millennium Sessions

Transcripts of
The Millennium Sessions
A Conversation between Perrie and Marcia Mayo
January 1, 2000
Tybee, Georgia

Marcia's questions and comments are written in normal print.
Perrie's comments are written in bold print.

How about starting with your mama. What you remember about your mother.

OK. Both of her parents came over as immigrants from Germany. I don't know datewise when it was, but some time in the 1880's.

So she was second generation. German was spoken in the home?

As children, I'm sure. Her parents, the first time I went I was about five years old, and, they still spoke a good deal of German. They also spoke English, with considerable accent.

Do you remember where they lived?

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I've forgotten the address.

But what kind of home?

I think it was maybe a second or third home because I think it would have been difficult to raise - let's see there were at least 4 or 5 children, and I don't think that house would have handled it. The next time I went to visit, which was about 2 or 3 years later, they were in a different home and it had an upstairs apartment and then there was the downstairs, where my mother's parents lived. And her sister and her husband and their 2 children lived in the apartment.

Your mother's sister.

Yes

Who were the children in your mother's family?

There was a son, who was a concert violinist. Then another son, who became a finished pianist. He played with dance bands. The third son, I guess was sort of a ne'er do well. In his youth, he followed a dare to crawl under a train on the railroad track and lost a leg. I knew him. He would come around during the summer. I would visit in the summer. I can remember, they owned about three cottages on a lake outside of Milwaukee.

Her parents' family?

Her parents' family. He would come to visit.

So you visited them some times at the lake.

Well, we always went to the lake. The way you got there. You took like a commuter train that went all over areas like that throughout Milwaukee. They had cars but you didn't use them like we do today.

So they did have an automobile.

Yeah.

Do you remember what her daddy did for a living?

He worked in some kind of a factory. I remember that he would come home with black hands. I don't know exactly what he did.

But they weren't poor.

No, they really weren't. I think they were very economical and saved and all that. But the children - of course, those two boys were educated musically.
There was not too much education. Mother was the first girl, and, apparently, she was a handful.

So, it was the three boys, and your mama

And then a younger sister.

Do you remember their names?

One of the brothers was George. The sister was Ella..... So, when my mother was about fifteen years old, they shipped her off to live with her mother's baby sister, who was in her early twenties. She was married to an old man, who was an oil shipping magnate in California. And so she was raised the rest of the way by this young, very young, aunt and, oh she had a ball.

I remember why she was shipped off. It had something to do with a boy.

Oh yeah. He was going away and she was going to run off down the track after him or something like that. They just couldn't handle her any more, so they dumped her.

That was a long ways!

Yeah!

Do you know how she got to California?

Train.

And so, she never lived in Milwaukee after that.

That's right. I guess she must have stayed there 5 or 6 years. I don't know exactly. And somehow, she met my father, who was engaged to a minister's daughter.

Wow!

And I don't know what happened, but they married, and came back to Prescott, Arizona.

How much older was your father than your mother?

About three years.

They met when he was in law school?

He had finished by then. He stayed there a year after he finished law school, and worked in the police court, I suppose prosecuting.....

That was in Los Angeles?

Yes. So then they went back to Arizona and for a short time they lived with my Arizona Grandmother, who was a widow by then.

Let's stop there and talk about your daddy's early life.

My father was Perry M. LIng and his father was Reese Martin LIng.

One other thing, your mama's name was Florence What Hartwig?

Flora

Flora!?

Flora Selma Theresa. They called her Flossie.

Do you know her mother's first name?

I think it was Emilie. I believe that was it. Her husband and she did not come over on the same ship. I don't know if they knew each other previously but they married after they came to this country. I think she was a teenager, maybe.

Both from Germany.

Both from the same area. Possibly, they knew each other family-wise.

Now, Mammo's name sounds Catholic. I assume they weren't Catholic. Were they Lutheran?

Yes, they were Lutheran.

OK. back to your daddy. Back to his early age.

There were three children. The first two just had a year between them. The third child (Harry) was maybe a couple of years after. He was blind. You may remember, the doctor who came when he was born was drunk, and, when the baby was born, you know you use silver nitrate to clear out the eyes. Whatever it was he put in - hydrochloric acid or something - and burned both eyes. He later lost one eye and had very little vision so he stayed with his mother for all of his life.

Now, who was the oldest?

Dave was the oldest, and my dad was a year or less.

Back to Reese Ling, your Grandfather. Was Reese Ling born in Prescott?

No, nor was my father's mother born in Prescott. She came out west from Kansas. My Grandmother went to Bethany School of Music. Nellie Osenburg came to Arizona by train.

Now, Nellie Osenburg was your daddy's mother.

Yeah. Her father had a place where they shoed horses and things like that, but also, they had harnesses and all that kind of stuff. This was in Prescott. Nellie was my Grandmother. She had a brother named Lee, who was much younger. Reese Ling's mother's name was, I can't think of her name. However, her husband died, and she married a man with another name.

Did you ever know your Great Grandmother?

No, they called her Grandma Bowen. Reese Ling was, at one time, very well known in Arizona, especially in Phoenix. He was an attorney.

What law school did he go to?

University of Michigan. And he and his bride, Nellie Osenburg, went to Michigan, they ran away, and promptly after getting there.....

They ran away from Prescott.

>From Prescott. He had been the first graduate of Tempe College, I guess it was maybe a two year course. Somewhere in the school, I've not seen it, there's a plaque with his name on it as the first graduate.

Is that Tempe College?

It's Arizona State University. And then he went to Michigan to get his law degree. That was in the 1880's. They had no funds.

They ran away and got married. How did he pay for law school?

He had learned shorthand somewhere and he took down all of the course lectures and then they had a reproducing machine......

He sold notes!!

He sold notes, way back then. That helped to support them. I think his mother, Grandma Bowen, who I did not know, she was with the family for a good many years, I think she was with them. He printed all this stuff and they made enough money, I guess my grandmother helped some.

Probably playing the piano. She played the piano, right?

Yes, she did but probably not for pay.

But she did play in later life, right?

Yes for the church but that was probably for free. Anyway, they finished law school. Two of their children were born there. Dave was born there....maybe she was just pregnant with my daddy when they came back...cause he was born in Prescott.

So they came back to Prescott for him to practice law?

I don't know whether he opened a law office. He became a judge right quick, because, when my dad and his brother, Dave, they got in trouble all the time. One time a burglar, something like a burglar, got into their sort of a tack room where they kept stuff, they had a couple of horses. Anyway, the boys, maybe 9 and 10 years old, they already had guns, for hunting, you know. Small, long but not real powerful. The burglar jumped the back fence and both boys shot him. Bird shot. Course it didn't kill him but it hurt.
Anyway, he was sent to court and tried by their father. And the judge, of course, gave him whatever punishment there was and read some in for his two sons. Those boys were well known. One Halloween, the two of them. The school was near where they lived. There was a big belfry on the top where you rang the bell. Those two boys got a cow somewhere and put a sling on it and hoisted it. I used to love hearing my grandmother telling those stories. She would get just as tickled. They were bad boys. They weren't mean but were just full of mischief. I would have hated to have raised them. Another time, their father got the first car in Prescott, a one cylinder red Rio. He brought it home and went in to tell the family. By the time the family all gathered to see the car, these two boys had taken everything out of the engine, it was only one cylinder. When their father came out there, his car was all apart. The boys said, it's ok, wait a minute and they put it all back together, and everybody drove it around the block. Their father only
had one leg.

Reese Ling lost a leg?

That was pretty common back then. I don't think he was run over by a train like my other relative. Anyhow, those boys were in trouble all the time. And they would leave home for three or four days with a bedroll and some food, like some grease to fry in, and a few things, and sling it over their shoulders and they would go out in the hills. They would kill rabbits and birds. Of course, Arizona was different then, even from when I came along. They were problem kids, I think. They both went to law school at the about the same time. Dave started a year ahead.

Where did they both go to undergraduate school?

All of their work was done at the University of Southern California. And, at that time, my grandmother, who was separated from her husband....

Now, he lived in Phoenix, didn't he?

Yes, and she kept house for them.

She went to California with them? Where was Harry at this time?

He went too. And she had some family there, cousins or something, so that she had people that she knew. I know so much more about their life than I did my mother's.

Alright, so when they are in law school, their mother and their brother, who is blind, went to California, lived with them kept house for them until they finished.

That's right. The first one who finished, Dave, got a job in the city court or something like that. Then, by the time my father finished later, Dave left California and went back to Arizona, to Clifton, in southern Arizona, and opened a law office and my father took over Dave's job in California. He stayed about a year, and that was when he met my mother.

Now, did your mother and your grandmother get along?

Like stray dogs. Sniff around a little bit. See, they lived with my grandmother for about a year until a little bit after I was born. Then they moved to Jerome.

Now, you said that your grandfather was a womanizer.

He was not a drunk. I don't know that he drank at all, but he sure had a lot of girlfriends.

When he was living in Phoenix?

Yes. You know, he ran for Senator from Arizona twice and came real close both times, and, I know there was a woman who collected all that information, all the ads. I don't know what happened to that material. I don't know if she was living with him. You didn't see much of that in those days.

Did your grandmother and your grandfather ever come back together after they were separated?

No

So after they separated, that was it. But he supported her?

I'm sure so. I don't know she would have lived. I had a good picture of the two of them on horseback.

Your grandparents?

Yes, that was before cars and if you didn't want to go on your feet, you rode in a wagon or on horseback. This was while they were still together.

What do you remember about your grandmother?

I remember a lot about my grandmother. I don't remember ever seeing my grandfather.

Didn't he die soon after you were born?

Actually, shortly before I was born.

I remember seeing your grandmother. She was still alive after I was born. I remember seeing her twice. I think....did she die at home?

She died in Phoenix in a nursing home and that is probably where you saw her.

Do you think I would have, cause when I saw that house in Prescott, there was something about that front room, with the bow window, I just seemed to remember that room. Did I ever go to that house?

Yeah, but any time that you would have gone, you wouldn't have gone in that room. By then, she had divided it up into 4 apartments and it was rented separately. She lived in that house until she became so senile that they had to move her. I think, if I am not mistaken, that I have pictures of you and Sandy on the front porch of that house in Prescott. You were really little, you might have been two years old, and Sandy is in his cowboy suit.

How about Harry?

He lived down in the same nursing home as my grandmother.

He went to the nursing home with her?

Yes, but in another section.

Now, he drank, didn't he?

Some, not so much. I mean he....I started to say that he never developed mentally but that is not so. He was probably smarter than either of the other two, but he never had much of a chance to do much.

He sold newspapers, right?

Yes, and some of the not-so-nice men would get him into a bar, and I don't know if they ever got him in with a woman....probably so.

I hope so. Do you remember your grandmother as being sad with her situation?

No. She didn't talk about it, which makes me think that her feelings were terribly hurt, you know. But I don't remember her ever talking about him.

Of course, at that point, she was a widow. He, at least, was nice enough to die so that she would be a widow.

He died of heart failure or something.

What happened to Dave?

Well, Dave went to Clifton, married a girl there, and had a baby about six months later.

That was your cousin.

Vivian, who died this last year. I think Dave had a law office but, very soon, he became some kind of a judge, a local judge of some sort, and he didn't really ever practice law again. He got into judicial politics and he sort of climbed up the judicial ladder. He finally became a federal district judge. That was an appointed position. And he kept that until his death.

Did he ever have other children?

Yeah, he had 5. Vivian was the first. She was a couple of months older than me. And then the next one was Marilyn, and then, John, he had red hair, and Bill, who lives in Oregon. I don't know where in Oregon. I thought I would tell Melissa and Billy. I don't know if he is still alive. After Bill was
Ann. John became an alcoholic and died young. Dave was a heavy, heavy,
heavy drinker, I don't know how he got by with it.

Were you all close to them when you were growing up?

Saw them at Christmas. That family sort of stuff.

Was your father close to Dave?

Yes and no. There was always competition between them. He went to my Dad's funeral and he was, um, I had gotten a Methodist minister. You know, my father never had attended church, and yet he was a believer. I don't know what it was that threw him, he didn't like organized religion. But I got a Methodist preacher in Phoenix to do the funeral service. He did a good job. He asked me for things. I got him to use...my dad thoroughly enjoyed poetry, like Kipling and things like that. So I gave him different poems that he used.

And Dave came to the funeral?

And he was incensed that I had gotten a preacher. I don't know what he would have done. And I don't know what they did when he died. They had been Methodist at one time. I don't know what happened to make them turn away.

Didn't your grandmother play the piano at the Methodist Church?

No, eventually my grandmother became a Christian Scientist. And Dave resented that strongly. I don't know that my father did. It was during the time that she was in the Christian Science Church that she played the organ.

There was something about a cat.

She had a cat named Mouser. He followed them a lot if they walked somewhere. Anyway, one day she went to church and she didn't look back and he followed her. And she went in and turned the organ on and the congregation came in. They were all ready, she started the first hymn and in walked the cat down the center aisle, tail up in the air, got up on the organ and sat down.

That church is still there, isn't it?

Yes, that was Mouser. He was a nice cat. He was a Maltese cat. Very dark gray.

So you knew Mouser as a child?

I was almost grown by then.

OK, back to your daddy and your mama who came back to Prescott after they were married.

And I was born there. I don't think my mother and my grandmother got along too well. So we moved to Jerome when I was about a year old.

What did your mother think about living in Arizona and in a place like Jerome?

I'm sure it was a shock. When she was in California, she was in the upper social class with this uncle.

And, in fact, didn't she christen a ship?

Yes, I used to have the ribbons from that. I don't know what happened to them. But anyway, she and the uncle had some problems. I think she borrowed money from him and charged things to stores. I think he was glad to get rid of her. As for Jerome, living in a little town like that was fun. You had about 90 percent Mexican and all of the middle European, Hungarians, people - mining people. And the so-called white population were the mining engineers, the educated people.

So, it was a nice little cloistered society.

It was. And all of the things that were done for the poor were done by them. They had an American Legion and an Elks Club, who were active. Most of the Mexicans were illegal immigrants, who came over mainly to have children who would be American citizens.

The story that you were born in a sanitarium. That was in Prescott? Why not a hospital?

This woman, who was a midwife, had a sanitarium. They called it a sanitarium.

But it was really just for having babies?

I think they had other people too. She was probably sort of a nurse. I don't think you had much in the way of trained nurses then.

So there wasn't a hospital in Prescott?

Yeah, I think so but it was minor. I think, really, at that time, Prescott was a fort. Military.

An Indian fort?

Yes, Fort Whipple. It was on the edge of Prescott. There was a hospital there.

Was it to keep the Indians at bay? Was it that kind of fort?

I think that was its origin. I don't think that I ever went into the fort but you drove by in on the way to Jerome.

Was it still active?

Not really when I came along. For a long time they used it as a sanitarium or something for injured World War One veterans. A place to recover. I think military men from all over the western United States maybe came there.

Back to where you were born. Some kind of little hospital-type place.

Yes, the Forrest Sanitarium, or something like that. There was a doctor there. Dr. Judge? I've forgotten the name of the man.

All went well? But your mother just decided not to have any more babies. What was the story about prohibition and she was sick when she was pregnant and she had to drink champagne?

Somebody suggested it and she would take anybody's suggestion.

She was just kind of a flapper, wasn't she?

Yes, she was. I don't know who it was, but somebody suggested that the morning sickness would go away if she would drink champagne. Well, of course, we had prohibition at the time and I don't know where they got the champagne. Somebody, this was right at WWI. Some friend of theirs who was in France shipped some champagne to them. A case of champagne. Anyway, she drank champagne.

Ok, so you moved to Jerome when you were about one. What do you remember about the early years?

Some of the things that I think that I remember I can't understand why because I was so young. One thing, I might have been two, I don't know. My folks had rented this house. It was called the Gibbs House. Of course, everything was on the side of the hill there and somehow I wandered away and somewhere down the road, lower, a Mexican child had got to playing with me and took me home. And so the mom..

And that just wasn't done, I'm sure.

No! And the mama took me in and, all that I can remember, I was sitting on a table and eating frijoles, I think, when my mother came to get me.

And, of course, there were no telephones to call.

No, I think they sent the child and the mother may have seen me previously. Of course, the house was not real close. You know we were separated. And also, I think that I have told you that, sitting on my steps when I was about 3 or 4, there was a family living underneath us down the side of the hill. I had gotten a toy piano and I was going to learn to play the piano even then, and the 2 little boys, the family downstairs, got 2 kits for Christmas, that had hammers and tools. And those 2 boys came up and I was sitting there with my piano and they beat up my piano. The funny thing was, at that time, my mother had a Negro woman who came in once a while. She was a wonderful pianist. She had been educated and how she got to Jerome, I don't know. Drucilla was her name. And she used to show me how to play on that little piano before the boys tore it up. Those 2 boys' parents. He was an educator and ended up as the superintendent of schools. He was principal of several schools.

How many schools were there in Jerome?

Well, you had the primary school that was down here, and the elementary school that was here and you had the Opportunity School...

Which was?

For retarded children.

Did they really call it the Opportunity School?

At that time, I don't know of anybody who did that. That paid any attention to them. And then down on the upper grades elementary school and then the high school. We had an excellent school system. It was pretty much run by the people that I have been talking about, the educated people. So we got good teachers and by then, J.O. Mullen, the father of the two brat brothers, who, by the way, I used to date in later years, he really ran a tight system.

Other memories of when you were really young. Something about a baby carriage that you didn't put away so your mother threw it away.

I don't remember that but I wouldn't be surprised. I was disciplined.

Mostly by your mama?

Both of them. My mother would dislike one thing and my father would say to forget it and vice versa. I dearly loved my father. My mother was my mother, and that was all.

But you were your father's girl?

I was my father's boy.

Do you remember your parents fighting?

Not very much. I don't think they got along real well all the time. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't. My father was sick most of his life. He had stomach ulcers and back then they had no way to treat them, and of course, now they do. He finally had surgery a couple of times. He ended up with cancer. So he died when he must have been 71.

What do you remember your mother doing during the day? I know she was a good cook.

She was an excellent housekeeper. She played bridge most every afternoon. She was active in an organization that took care of people who had no money or illnesses, usually the Mexicans. They did a lot of social service work. If a mother was sick in the hospital, they would see that the children got fed.

What was your house like growing up? Was it the house that you showed me when we were in Jerome?

No, probably not. We lived in a series of houses. You know that Jerome was a mining town, and it basically was operated by the Verde Mine. They had a store that was like a commissary. They didn't call it that, but it was similar to that. People that worked for the mine paid once a month for the groceries and stuff they had bought. A company store. The hospital was a company hospital.

Everybody else could use it?

If it wasn't crowded. And my father, being the lawyer in town, there was another lawyer but he wasn't particularly educated. He had read the law but. Also, my dad, at one time, was justice of the peace, police judge. So, when the mine wasn't too crowded, we could live in the apartment house, which was owned by the mine. The other houses in town were owned by the mine. There was very little private property. So, we moved frequently when someone else needed our place. We even lived in my father's office for about 6 months. And then about that time, they said, come on back, we've got an apartment for you. We lived in 2 different apartments, each of them 2 different times, in and out, in and out. That was really the most pleasant living for some reason. No bedrooms. Murphy beds. One apartment was bigger than the other.
They had a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen, and then a dressing room and bath. And, in the largest apartment, my bed had to be pulled out and opened up in the dining room. My parents' was pulled out in the living room. And then, the other apartment, overall, it was smaller but their room in the dressing room to put my little bed so it didn't have to be pulled out. But that was right in the center of town. It was a nice place to live.

Who do you remember as being your earliest friends?

Probably, Mary Lou Carlson and Betty Beale.

Now I know that I have met the Beale's.

Mary and Bill? Well, Bill's and Betty's mother and father, his father was a doctor. And they were stationed at a mine in Cananea Mexico, when I think it was the last revolution in Mexico, and they had to get out. The husband, the doctor, went one way and the wife and her three children went the other way, and they finally got together in New York City. Maybe a year later. Neither knew where the other was. Of course, the wife had been having a high old life because she had nursemaids and everything. I don't know how she lived in New York. Somewhere, I guess in New York, she got together with Clarence Beale. Addison was the name of Bill's family. By then, they had found out that he husband had been killed so she married Clarence Beale, who was a mining man, and they came back to Arizona.

So Bill was not really a Beale, he just took that name.

Yes, and when they got to Jerome, he was not with the United Verde, he was with the Verde Extension Mine - a separate corporation.

So how old were Betty and Bill at that point?

Betty, Bill's sister, when I first met her was about 4. Betty was the youngest, she was almost a year older than I was. Then there was Bill, who was older than she, and Nancy, who was maybe a year and a half older than Bill. Our parents were friends. And Mary Lou Carlson, her father was the doctor, the surgeon at the United Verde Hospital. Later, they built a much larger hospital, the place where we went and had a drink - it's been made into a hotel. Mary Lou was a little younger. She had 2 older brothers, the
one we called Doc and then the one we called Junior, who was the younger son. Mary Lou was my playmate, but then her parents divorced and her mother moved the kids to California, so I never saw her some during the summer when she came to visit her father. And then one day, when I was president of the Jenkins PTA and I was chairing a meeting at night and a woman came after the meeting and said that she was Mary Lou. Her husband was in the military and was stationed at Hunter. She was living on the base at Hunter and I saw her off and on for the next year or so. You know, other than my youngest cousin in Milwaukee and this Bill Ling that I think is in Oregon, I don't know of any kinfolk that I have left of my generation. Everybody else it gone, which is strange.

Betty Beale?

Betty went to nursing school in New Mexico, to a Catholic nursing school, and she married one of the priests, they moved to Florida. She ended up an alcoholic.

Mary Beale was not from Jerome?

No, she was from Prescott. Her father was a lawyer. Her parents died and Mary went to live with cousins in Clarkdale or Clemenceau. She finished high school.

Did you know her before she married Bill?

Not very well. But then she ended up in college at the University with me. She was a Gamma Phi. Then she and Bill married and Bill came back to Jerome. All in Jerome kind of ended when I was in the army. There wasn't enough ore that was rich to let a big company work on it.

When did you all start going to Oak Creek? When was all that?

The first trip that I can remember to Oak Creek, I was about 3 years old and you can imagine what the road was like. You can imagine what cars were like. It took a while to get there.

But the cabin was not built, right?

Oh no. We stayed at Lolamai Lodge. My first memory was....do you know what son's of guns are for the 4th of July?

No.

They are little round sort of flat things wrapped in red paper and you throw them hard on the ground and they make noise. I remember that. I must have been about 4 years old.

What was Lolamai Lodge like?

Two story, little rooms opening on to a gallery on the top floor where you slept. I know I slept on that porch and they had a big dining room downstairs. I don't remember that much about it because I was so young. But one thing I do remember was that I wanted to fish. My daddy was fishing.
And I watched him and the next day, they had not gotten up and I got up and sneaked down there with somebody's fishing pole and I found some worms, put them on the hook, and I caught a fish, and I brought it back and I went up the steps and I called, "I got a fish, I got a fish." And that was the start of my fishing.

So, at that point they decided that they wanted to try to have a place there.

That was much later. We continued to go up there from time to time with different cars and stayed some other places. We camped several times.

With another couple or just the three of you?

They had friends that they traveled with. There and other places. They took me to the Grand Canyon when I was 3 months old, camping.

I can't imagine your mother camping.

I don't think she was happy with it. And I think it was because of her that they build the cabin. The first cabin was across from there. It was smaller, it was the nucleus of what it became in the end. It was a lot of fun, and we spent a lot of time there. They became friends with George Babbitt.

How did they know George Babbitt?

Just from Oak Creek. We had built the original cabin on forest service land. We had a 99 year lease but knew that some time they were going to close that out. We got to be such good friends with George. George really liked having us around because his wife, Ruth, was an alcoholic too and he felt safer leaving her there.

What did he do for a living?

He was postmaster.

Oh I thought he had a lot of money.

He came from a very wealthy family. The family had educated him to be a priest but it didn't take. He went to California to a Catholic school. Ruth had been divorced so the Catholic Church didn't accept his marriage to her. I do have pictures where they finally went back to Mexico and got married down there because she had to be divorced - I think she got her divorce decree in Mexico. Then they got married there. Then they decided that they needed to get married again in this country. I have pictures of my folks with them - you can see that they were all high by their eyes after the wedding. It was by a priest who agreed to marry them as if he didn't know. Then the 4 of them had a big celebration.

Did the town of Sedona exist at that time?

There was just a little post office with a little bitty store.

Was it called Sedona?

Yes. Anyway across the road is where we finally got George Babbitt to sell us that land, with the stipulation that, if we ever sold it, he would have the opportunity to buy it back.

So you sold it back to him?

Yes. And they lived there for a couple of years.

So how old were you when they built the first house?

About 9.

Then they moved that house across the road? How old were you then?

Yes, it was the nucleus for the new house. I was about 14. We just surrounded it.

Describe the inside of the house after it was finished.

When we first started, we just had bare wide boards on the outside.

Did your daddy do most of the work on the house?

Not the real work. He had carpenters from the mine come down, but he and I together did the odd jobs. In order to have running water in the house, we took a big water heater tank and hoisted it up in the top to the top of 2 trees and used a ram, which is a little device that you put running water and it hits an opening and it pushes and does it again and again and again, pushing that water up the pipe to the tank until you have water in there.

And then it would come back into the house. And you all built that?

Yes.

Before that, would you have to bring water in from the creek?

Carry it in buckets.

You remember that?

Oh yes.

Did you have a toilet in the house?

Initially we went across the way, we had a forest service privy. Forest Service built it for us. We didn't have inside bath until we moved over to the other lot. At that point we just ran a line up to the spring and the water came down by gravity.

How was the house set up inside? I know there was the big room that had the fireplace.

It had a living room and what had been a sleeping porch but it was opened to where you had in the living room we had 2 sofas back to back and one faced the fireplace and the other one faced the creek. And then we had arm chairs around both of them.

So, how many bedrooms?

Three, my parents' room, mine, and a guest room.

Electricity?

No! Not until the Babbitts put it in. By the time they got there, the power company had run through Oak Creek. But never when we were there. We had gasoline lamps. With a lid on them, they looked just like an electric light and, in fact, the light was better, easier on your eyes.

How did you all cook?

Gasoline range, 4 burners and the oven. It's a wonder we didn't ever blow it up.

What do you remember eating there? How did you all eat differently there than you did at home?

Not differently. The same except that we had a lot of trout that we didn't have in town. We had ice delivery twice a week. There was a man somewhere down in the Verde Valley. There were quite a few cabins in the canyon and it was worth his time and effort for him to bring ice and certain things that you would order, milk and stuff like that.

That's where you were when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

No, I was in Jerome. I was teaching school. And so, right after Pearl Harbor they started talking about people signing up for this, that and the other and that was when, you see I was teaching physical education and the requirement to take the physical therapy program was that you had a degree in physical education or you were a degree nurse.

And that was you!

That was me. And the first time that I applied they told me that I couldn't see well enough, and with almost return mail, they sent me a wire and said that it didn't matter whether I could see or not. They told me to report to Washington, DC, a hospital there almost immediately. Then the next telegram said that they were starting a school in Texas and for me to go to Texas, so I did. But I didn't go until about the middle of the summer.

You were kind of excited. You weren't all that happy with going back home and teaching school.

Yeah, I had been teaching 4 years. I taught 7th and 8th grades.

And who were you dating?

I was dating my dentist. You wonder about dating the man who has been looking all through your mouth.

Ok, we've gotten lost here. We will come back to that later. Back to Oak Creek. Did you have Oak Creek friends that were separate from your friends in Jerome?

No, the Mullins, the superintendent of schools, the same boys that beat up my piano, their family had a cottage down lower than where we were. We used to get together some times. They came by the house one night and they had decided to go on a swimming party, and, of course, that creek was always freezing cold. Really, it was warmer at night than it was in the daytime. But anyhow, my dad took a gasoline lantern and we all went trouping down the road a way to a good hole that was deep. I'm trying to think. I had a guest from the University. We took her down too and she was just fascinated.
Those 2 boys, and they had some friends with them. In the summer, I wasn't dating any, not there.

Would you go down and stay for the summer?

Yes, off and on. My dad would come every weekend, and sometimes, some weeks, I don't remember that I stayed in town more than once or twice. My mother didn't like to stay alone. So nearly always went when just she was there.

Now, when you ended up at Northern Arizona...

I had to transfer my last year of college. I had completed all of my requirements for a major in physical education but I decided that the PE job was not going to be open and I, at that point, wanted to go back to Jerome, which was probably a stupid thing to do. But, anyway, I decided I better have a second major so, in order to get an elementary school major in a year's time I had to go to summer school both before and after that year. I had to, the University did not give elementary education. They only did high school so, that was the reason I did it.

Did you live in Flagstaff?

Yes, I lived in the dormitory during the week, and on the weekends, I either went to Jerome or Oak Creek. I rode with Louie McDonald, who had been my high school principal.

Did you all ever go to Oak Creek in the winter?

Occasionally. The weather was no worse there but the roads were bad. If there had been a snow, it was hard to get in and out.

Was it cooler in Oak Creek during the summer?

Yes, much, much cooler. It was delightful in the summer. You see, the canyon like that, the sun came up in the back and, when it went down, which was the side, do you remember that red rock we were looking at, that was the western side. When it went down, it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and so that made it get real cool real fast.

What made you decide to go to the University of Arizona?

Because it was the place to go.

That's a long way, isn't it. That took a while to get there, didn't it?

Yeah, it took about 5 or 6 hours. I rode the bus, most of the time.

Did you have any good friends who were going there?

Bill Beale was there. And Mary Beale but she wasn't Beale then, she was Mary Sullivan. Clara Darcy, who was from my home town. She was the only other one from Jerome. And a couple of people from Prescott. And one or two from Clarkdale.

Were you homesick?

No, I don't think so. I think that I had reached the stage where, I probably should not have gone back to teach.

Why do you think you did that?

I may have felt that I had to. I knew that it was a nice place to live. I worked hard teaching. I did a lot of extra dumb things. I remember I made them - remember the sand boxes you do for little children. I made them bring me one of those when I was teaching seventh and eighth grade history. I taught the Civil War with the battles in the sand box. I did a lot of stuff like that. I think I was a good teacher. And I had seventh grade. You had the Red, White, and Blue. Red were the smart kids, White were the middle
kids, and then there were the Blue. We did have a number of smart Mexican kids in the Red group. The middle group were a lot of Middle Europeans. You know, all of the miners came from different countries.

Tell about your summer in Mexico City.

Summer school. The Spanish teacher in the high school.

You were already teaching then.

Yep. I was teaching. In fact, that was my 4th year. I needed to do something. Though I had gone somewhere every summer. The Spanish teacher was a good friend. In fact, she lived sort of diagonally across the street. She was from a Spanish, not Mexican family. Her parents were from Spain.
They were very Spanish. She was a lot of fun and a very nice person. So, she and 2 other teachers decided to go to Mexico. The other 2 were just going down for a couple of weeks and I was going to spend one summer quarter and she was going to stay on for the entire summer. So we went down there. We went down on the train. I had a car but you didn't go long distances at that point.

Where would you catch the train?

For that, I think we did in Phoenix. Rode the bus to Phoenix. Or else, my folks took us to Phoenix. I can't remember.

So, you took Spanish?

Yeah, I took a course in Aztec archeology and conversational Spanish. It was a lot of fun.

Where did you live?

Angie had been there before. This was her last year on her Master's Degree and so she had gotten to know this woman, who was French. It's amazing how many other internationals there are in Mexico, particularly Mexico City. She had a very nice building that....so much of Mexico City was floors around a big patio, and we had half of the second floor area, which included 2 bedrooms, a bath or baths, I have forgotten, and a little living room. It also had a kind of kitchenette in it.

So you ended up being there 6 weeks maybe?

Something like that. Through Angie, I got to meet Mexican people from the school and went to parties and things like that and dated a young lawyer. When we went down on the train, we met some people who were going home. They had been back in the states and they were going back where they worked in Mexico. Older people, and they introduced me to Bill Cartledge, and so I alternated between going out with the young Mexican lawyer and Bill.

Now, Cartledge was an American, doing what?

He worked for Bordon Dairies, one of the big dairy companies that made canned milk. It was done outside on the edge of Mexico City and it was canned there, and the processing had huge tanks that they use and they mix all this stuff and can it. Well, those tanks get maybe rusted or something like that inside and he used to have to go, he would take off his suit and all, and put on overalls and cover his head and go into those tanks to check what the problems were and then get somebody to show them how to fix it.

Where was he from?

Florida, maybe. Anyhow, I dated him. When we would go to places overnight, the people that I had met coming down went too. They were good friends of his. Of course, he had been married. I think the divorce was final. I'm not sure. I always wondered. His wife was a teacher in an American school down
there.

So she was down there?

She was in Mexico. But they were not living together. But anyway, I alternated between him and the Mexican.

Do you remember the Mexican's name?

Ernest Mariscol.

So, could he speak English pretty well?

Pretty good, yeah. The other one, Bill. We went up to Lake Chapala and then to Guadalajara. We stayed in a hotel. A strange kind of place. Anyway, he tried his best and, believe it or not, I didn't capitulate.

He just wasn't the right one.

No. Bill was a nice, nice person. He was really a little bit old for me. I think he was maybe 5 or 6 years older than me.

Tell about when you went into training for the army.

Well, Pearl Harbor happened. Like everybody, I was shocked to death. We heard it early Sunday morning on the radio. I think I was sewing. And, of course, I had no idea of anything that I was going to do. Sometime, in the early Spring, they began talking about training people for different things, and one of them was Physical Therapy. I read about it first in my professional magazine, and so I think I wired, you didn't telephone then. I sent a telegram asking for further information. They told me I could go to a school in Michigan, Ann Arbor. It wasn't the University. One of them was a school that was run by Sister Kenny, she was a physical therapist that came from England to Australia, and then she came to the United States. She was the originator of physical therapy in the United States. She had a training program. Anyway, I considered going there, and about that time I heard about the Army program, which was free. And we were paid, a pittance, while we were in training. And so, I applied to that, and was accepted, even though I couldn't see well. That's when I ended up in Texas. There were 5 of us, we were the first class.

What did you parents think about you doing that?

Oh, I think they were proud.

Were they worried about you going to war?

I don't think so. I didn't give them any choice. I just said I was going.

So you went to Texas. Was that San Antonio?

Yes, Fort Sam Houston

And how long were you there?

A little over a year.

Was the training hard?

It was interesting.

What was life like there? Did you have fun?

Fun.

Were there a lot of soldiers?

Yeah. Of course, we weren't supposed to date anybody but officers. But we did.

Now, were you commissioned immediately?

No, we had to complete the program. We completed the program in late August and the next day, we signed up for the army and got our commissions.

Where did you live during your training?

On the base. They were wooden barracks. We left within a couple of weeks of our completion of the course. We sat around in San Francisco for a couple of weeks, getting clothing. They gave cold weather clothing and told us we were going to Alaska. When we finally left and got on our ship with our stuff, we were the first ship that ever went over without an accompanying gunboat. We went down past the tip of South America and then turned west and came up at the bottom of New Zealand and then up the Australian coast.

When did you know you were going to Australia?

When we got there.

You really didn't know where you were?

No.

Didn't that drive you crazy?

No. I was a lark! Everyday something different, and somebody different.

So, how many women were on this ship and how many men?

Probably about 100 women and 1000 men.

You were probably sorry when you got there!

By then, I was dating the merchant marine man that was head of, let's see what his job was on the ship. Head of all the mechanics.

How did you date on the ship?

Just like any place else. There was one place where we got together every night. The fellow that I ended up dating could really play the piano and we sang with the piano.

Could you drink?

If you had it, you could.

They didn't sell it or anything.

No, there was nothing like that.

Did you stop in a port ever?

No, not until we hit Brisbane.

How did you take on fuel?

I guess we carried enough. I can't remember how many people it was supposed to carry.

I remember that you had 4 times as many people as you were supposed to. Did you all just have a tiny little space?

We had cabins, 3 tier bunks, 3 of them, 9 girls to a room. And you couldn't get down and get dressed except one at a time, so you sat on your bunk and you pulled on your under clothes and then you took your turn to come down. We did have a bathroom, a pretty good size one. But it had salt water in it, no fresh water.

Where did you store your stuff?

In the hold of the ship. We were allowed to keep a musette bag, that you hung over your shoulders, but your bedrolls and your foot lockers were in the hold.

Food.

Two meals a day. And I was one of the few women that ever went to eat. The rest of them were so seasick. I've never been seasick.

The food was ok.

Yep. It was good. It was hearty.

You all didn't have any work to do on that ship. Wasn't there anything they wanted you to do?

No, 23 days. It was getting kind of boring toward the end. We played cards.

The men, did they have stuff to do or were they just being transported?

They made up stuff for them to do. They assigned them things to check on this, check on that. But see, we didn't have anybody to lead us. We could do whatever we pleased. We had dietitians, physical therapists, and nurses.

Did you just have physical therapists rooming with you?


We had some dietitians and maybe a couple of nurses.

So, you got off in Brisbane?

Yes

I bet you were excited.

We wanted to see what was next. And we arrived Christmas Eve day. And they took us to a camp somewhere. We stayed there for a couple of weeks. On Christmas day, this girl and I went into Brisbane with 2 fellows from the ship and went to the horse races. We had a good meal, an Australian meal. This was the man who was the chief engineer or something, I don't know what his title was but he was a big wig on the ship. I wouldn't have anybody else. The other girl was a dietitian. While we were at that camp, we got our assignments. Three of us were sent to this hospital at a beach, I can't think of the name of it, which today is supposedly the best beach in the world. And there we were. We didn't have much work in the beginning because this hospital that I joined had people who had just come back from the islands and they had been all shot up, just had all kinds of things but they couldn't send them home because they hadn't been overseas long enough, so they let them set up a hospital on the beach. We only operated from 7 in the morning until noon. Then we all took off in the afternoon and went somewhere, mostly to the beach. A lot of the people got together and rented cottages, which was nice.

So you were not working hard. You didn't see many really hurt people.

No, except for our own people who got into a jam a wrecked a jeep or something. When I think about the glamour. To be young and all.

How old were you then?

25 or 26

How long were you there?

A little over a year. Came back, and the reason was the hospital that I had joined, they were all packed up and waiting for assignment. We were going to the Philippines. But, in so doing, they were doing a bunch of tests, x-rays and stuff, and they found a couple of spots on my lungs. They didn't know that I had had them since I was 16. What is was was that everybody in Arizona was exposed to tuberculosis because so many Eastern people came out there thinking they would be cured, which was not so. But you were exposed and if you were healthy, your body would form tubercles, they called it. But that was the reason that I was sent back to the states.

It's funny that they didn't notice it when you were heading out.

The reason for that was that they had a lot of people breaking down with tuberculosis in the Philippines. They were alerted to it.

So you came back on a ship similar to the one that you went out on.

No, a hospital ship with all the maimed.

That wasn't as much fun, was it.

No, but I found a fella.

But you had to work on that one, right?

No.

So you still weren't working. You really didn't work for about 2 years.

That's right. Oh, got back and, oh, where was I going to go? Some place glamorous. And they sent me right back where I had come from - San Antonio. I wasn't about to go back and let Capt. Kuraner tell me what to do. I liked her really but...they were opening a new clinic.... they were sending a lot of men back who were too sick to go back to duty but they were well enough that they were ambulatory. They built buildings for them to live in, and if they needed further medical treatment, they got it. Got their clothing and all that kind of stuff. So, I had a physical therapy clinic, and what they thought was that, the Japanese war was not over, and we thought that when our injured came back from the war, that we were going to have so many horrible injuries. I had this huge clinic to organize - this was still at Fort Sam but down from the hospital - and I had I guess 40 treatment tables and..

You were in charge of this?

Yes, I was the one who organized it and ordered the stuff. Whirlpools and things like that - 25 of them. We were ready for a real onslaught that never came.

Because the war ended.

Yes

Back to Australia. Did you all mingle at all with the Australians?

We did where we lived. A few. Actually, our military had taken over everything. When you went to Sidney, you had to stay in a Red Cross establishment there. I don't think they ever knew if you checked in again but...you signed up. But, they had a lot of entertainment planned for you when you were there. It was fun. You would go on leave down there. Mary Madget and I went to Sidney one time. In fact we met there because she was in the islands, and we got there and some one, a Dutch flier, told her that he would get her down to Tasmania, that they had a plane going down and she was going. She didn't have orders or anything. She wanted me to go and I wouldn't do it. It ended up she didn't go either. I remember one night we met a bunch of Dutch fliers, I don't know how, one of them had apparently contacted somebody where we were, so we went out with them. We had a good time. We couldn't understand each other but it was fun. Different.

Didn't you say that there would be jeeps on the beach? Someone would come by in a jeep and take you to the beach.

No, we had GI trucks that would drive all around the different areas and pick you up and take you to the beach. And by then, like I said, most of the officers had cottages. The ones you knew best, you went to their cottage.

They just rented them for the duration of the time that they were there? Liaisons and things like that?

That's right.

Who is the guy that you came closest to marrying before daddy?

My dentist. Not my Arizona dentist. My Australian dentist, except that he wasn't Australian and he was married. He was married one week before he shipped out, which was sad. We called him Rooky. I have often wondered what happened to him.

Now, where was he from?

New York City.

And you met him in Australia.

At the hospital.

You pretty much dated him the whole time?

Yes. Entirely when I was there.

Did it just break your heart when you left him?

Sort of. We both left when they broke up the hospital. Then sent him to New Guinea and put me in a general hospital that was going to the Philippines. About that time, the Bataan march occurred and we took care of the prisoners. They were the most pitiful looking creatures.

Now, this was still in Australia? The Bataan Death March people? So you did see very injured people?

Yeah, oh yeah. They came by submarine to Brisbane. You just can't imagine how awful they looked.

They were skeletons, weren't they?

Their feet were swelled up like this and, oh, you just figured, well they are going to drop any minute. We used to go to the wards to treat them or just to talk to them and try to encourage them. And in a week's time, they got uniforms, you see they didn't have anything to wear, no shoes. You would look out of the window and you would see them in full dress uniform and barefooted. They couldn't wear shoes for quite a while. But you couldn't believe how resilient they were. They looked like different people entirely.
They got a good bath, but they couldn't wear shoes.

I imagine a lot of them had trouble with their feet for the rest of their lives.

About that time is when we were breaking up. The hospital did end up going to the Philippines. Me, I am in a hospital ship going back to San Francisco.

And you were mad.

I was! I was furious, but there wasn't a thing I could do about it. And I got there and they kept me to bed for a while in San Francisco, at Letterman General. Waiting to ship us, there were others too, out. Went to Fitzsimmons General in Denver, put us in bed, told us not to get up. We had to use bedpans.

Why?

Because they thought that we already had active tuberculosis. And oh gosh, the way they tested. They made you swallow a tube and then they would flush out your stomach.

How long did that last?

Several days. We stayed in bed. I remember, a shopper from a big department store came and took orders and shopped for you. And I wanted some yarn and some knitting books. I had sent a whole foot locker full of Australian yarn home but I didn't have it at that point. I wanted something to do. It was driving me crazy being in bed. I shared the room with another gal, she was from Texas. We enjoyed each other but then they called a board review and made us put on uniforms and present ourselves and they said there is nothing wrong with you. Go back to work. But, before you do that, take off 6 weeks leave. But not all at once. Three weeks one time and three another. So, the first three weeks, I went to Prescott, where my folks were and stayed there and enjoyed it.

They were in Prescott or Jerome?

They were in Prescott then. They had left Jerome. After there, I had to report to El Paso and they couldn't decide where they were going to assign me. They talked about all kinds of different places and I said any place but Fort Sam Houston. Not that I didn't like it but I just wanted to see a new place. My orders came in, Fort Sam Houston. But, before I could go to Fort Sam Houston, I had to go to California to a redemption center and we had Hollywood personalities every night to entertain us. Jack Benny, people of that ilk.

Ok, so you ended up back in San Antonio. Tell about meeting daddy.

I opened a physical therapy clinic there. It was the biggest I had ever seen. It was bigger than the one at the hospital where I had trained. Got that organized and, where by clinic was, the building was real long and there were 2 sections, connected by a room. There was a door on the back and a door on the front. My desk with in this middle section, it was where people made appointments and that kind of stuff. Then I wasn't actually doing much physical therapy, just doing the operation of running the clinic. I don't remember how many girls I had working, 8 I think it was. Plus all the corps men. That's background, let me go back. Prior to that, I was looking for another man. The one that I had was still overseas. I had started looking and I saw Daddy. I don't remember where I saw him first. Anyway, he would ask me if I wanted to have a "dope", which was what Southerners called a coke. There was a PX right across from my front door. So I said yeah. He would come in the back door and say "here I am" and went right out the front door. I had to put somebody in my place before I could follow him out. This went on for several weeks, and then I decided to run my clinic on Sundays and
I told your dad that I was going to have to do that, so of course he showed up on Sunday. We finally ended up. I had a friend, who was a gal, who I had helped get married. She had a car and she knew that I had found somebody that I was interested in and so we worked out a deal - and he must have left word so that we would hear - we had gone to this camp that was nearby that had a swimming pool. We got our bathing suits on and went and, sure enough, there was your dad. Not in a bathing suit, just sitting around. And so, I talked with him some and then the gal, Stella, we had figured this all out. The girl said that she had to go back to the dorm to get something and he said that he would ride with us. She drove, I sat in the middle, and he sat on the side. When we got to the dormitory, she got out and left us for about 30 minutes. Then we went back and he sort of asked for a date. I think the next Sunday we went to town on the bus and then took another bus that went out in the country and went to a museum sort of thing, went all through it and stuff. Coming back, we got to the road and realized the bus system was through for the day. So, we started walking down the highway, figuring somebody would pick us up, and, sure enough, a truck did. We ended up in downtown San Antonio. I think we went and ate and then got a bus home. Then these trips became kind of regular. But, it was fun and you how much you enjoy things like that. This was in the summer. By November, this must have been 1945 because we got married in 1946.

So, what was it that attracted you to him? He came from a really different background.

I don't know. Maybe that was it.

What did you like about the way he looked?

I though he was pretty!

Did that make you a little bit nervous that he was from the South?

Nothing made me nervous those days.

What about the idea of moving back to Georgia? Did you all ever discuss staying out west?

Once, I said that we could stay in Arizona. He said no, that his life and his family were in Georgia.

So he felt responsible. His father had died.

And his mother died when he was really young.

But his dad died when he was in the military, right? So he felt responsible for those sisters, I guess.

I think so.

So, you decided to get married. When did you tell your parents?

I'm not sure. I think that I had told them ahead of time so it wasn't a big shock. Then we called them from the big hotel right after we got through with the supper party.

You mean after the wedding.

Yes, it wasn't a real wedding. The people that he lived with who lived on the edge of the post. Nice people.

So you called your parents after you got married? Did you get married in a church?

Yes, at a Methodist Church in San Antonio. I had earlier joined the Episcopal Church in college so that I could stand up with a couple whose baby was being Christened. I wasn't joining the church in my mind. I was just qualifying to stand up with them.

Did you have a party after the wedding at those people's house?

No, out in the boondocks there. There was a lot of that in Texas, nightclubs surrounding. It was a nice place. I don't remember much about it. I remember calling my folks.

That was February. How long before you both got out of the army?

About 2 weeks.

Had either of you considered staying in longer?

No, we had been in 4 years. Actually, Daddy had been in 5 years. No, we were glad to get out. We had no idea what the future held.

What did Daddy think that he was going to do?

He had no idea. He had run a service station, and owned it, but he didn't want to do that. After we got back to Waycross and settle in to the old house, he spent a lot of time painting. That was a big job. I've got a picture of myself in a wrap around uniform thing that you wore on duty in a stateside hospital. I used it as a maternity dress.

On your way south, you stopped by Oak Creek, right?

And Prescott. We stopped by there and went up to Oak Creek.

And they liked him?

Apparently.

I remember a picture of him building some kind of something. What was that?

He had gotten somewhere in Phoenix and how he got it there, I don't know. Two oil drums welded together, with part of the 2 ends open. It was used to burn trash in. It was what the army used.

So Daddy just thought of doing that to contribute?

Well, my dad had been talking about what to do with the garbage at Oak Creek.
I think we must have had somebody bring it out in a truck.

How long did you stay with your parents before you headed south.

A couple or three weeks.

After you got to Waycross, how long before you saw your parents again?

They came when Sandy was born. Sandy was born the same year we were married. Ten months later, which was nice. Then my folks came. My dad had something in Washington, DC. a case he was trying at the Supreme Court. My dad and George got along real well.