Staying All Night With Aunt Betty

When I was around 4 years old, my mom had to have a hysterectomy. This was in maybe 1960, so she would have had to stay in the hospital several days. So they decided I could stay with my Aunt Betty until Mom got to come home, because of course, Dad would still have to go to work every day. 

So, Dad took me to Aunt Betty's house. I loved Aunt Betty and loved being at her house. Aunt Betty was always really friendly and funny and thought of fun things to do. I was happy. 

The first night passed well. I got to sleep in a bed all by myself, well, with my baby doll, but me and the doll got settled in, and slept well. I will always remember the sheets on that bed. They were so smooth and cool feeling. I learned years later those kind of sheets were percale, and they made their mark on me, I still like percale sheets above all others.

So the visit all kind of blends and runs together in my memory, I'm not sure how long I stayed at Aunt Betty's. 

One day she made doll clothes for my baby doll, always a favorite memory of mine. 

We looked at flowers, looked at the garden, I played in the yard. I was pretty much okay.......until Dad came up to see how I was making it. 

Yep! 

That was the end of the stay with Aunt Betty. I loved her,  she was so sweet to me, I loved her... but I did not want to stay another minute there after I saw my daddy.

Nothing that either one of them could say would sway me. I was crying and hanging on to my dad and I aimed to go home with him. 

Okay, so Dad took me home with him, and had to drive up to Grandma Mary's that same evening to get Grandma to come to our house and stay with me during the day. 

I don't even remember how long she stayed or how many days it was until Mom came home. She probably wasn't thrilled that Grandma Mary was there taking care of me, but I was completely satisified...little brat. 

UNCLE BILL LAWSON

Sometime after Dad moved us to Bradleyville, Bill Lawson, Dad's uncle, Grandma Mary's older brother, came to live with us. We had always gone up and taken Uncle Bill to the store or took him groceries, but he was nearly blind and wouldn't move in with anybody no matter how much he was asked.

 Well, one night his house caught on fire, and of course, he couldn't see to fight it and he was fortunate to get out of the house before it collapsed in flames upon him.

 After that, he lived with Grandma Mary and Brown, his sister and brother, for a while, in Grandma Mary's house. I'm not sure what came first or next, but I think he went to live with Ginger for a while after he lived with Grandma Mary, then when she re-married and moved, he came to live with us.

Uncle Bill was one of the most kindhearted sweet old guys I ever knew. I never knew my Grandpa Sloan really, he lived in Washington State my whole life and I had only seen him a handful of times so Uncle Bill, Grandma Mary's brother, my great uncle, took my grandfather's place in my mind. Of course I had Grandpa Toad, he was my grandpa, he was fun, I loved him a ton, but I also loved Uncle Bill.

We used to go up Caney to his house to take Uncle Bill somewhere or take him groceries, and it was always a fun time to me. I was under 10 years old so I didn't react quite the way my mom did to his house and the way he lived. 

I just remember going there a few times, one time we went into the house, and there were chickens on the couch and walking around. We had to brush off a place to sit on the couch. I guess it was easier to find the eggs for a partially blind man if they laid them already in the house....hahaha.

Another time when we went up there, there were cats in the house, lots of cats, and Uncle Bill had left the refrigerator door open (by accident, I'm sure!) and there were cats getting in the fridge, helping themselves to leftovers or whatever was in there. 

I always wondered if Uncle Bill was so blind he couldn't see the cats scurrying around, and the chickens? I know he wasn't quite that blind yet, I think he just didn't care about it.

When Uncle Bill was a younger man, he traveled out west and did a little panning for gold. I still have a big gold nugget he gave to my mom, then later she gave to me. She carried it around in her purse all the time, and I did for a while, but I finally put it in a safer place, because I lost it a couple of times and decided I would lose it for good if I kept on like that.

Uncle Bill said he met Buffalo Bill at one of his shows one time while he was out west. 

Uncle Bill never married, or so he said. We always kinda wondered if he was telling the truth about it, he had a picture of him and a lady sitting together just like the pictures of back in the day when married couples sat together for a picture. 

When Uncle Bill lived up Caney, when he first came back from out west, he lived where the house burned. Across Caney Creek in a cabin lived a man and his two young sons. The boy's names were Alvin and Ivan Adams. They visited Uncle Bill a lot, and thought of Uncle Bill as an uncle, or dad figure, although they weren't related. The way it was told to me was, Uncle Bill offered to move into the cabin and let the dad and boys have the better house, so that is what they did and that's where he lived for years until the boys left, and then he moved back into his house. I don't know what became of the dad.

Uncle Bill used to grow a big patch of watermelons, and the local boys, including Alvin and Ivan, would sneak into the patch and steal a watermelon. When Uncle Bill was asked about it, he said that was the reason he planted the watermelons, was so they could steal them and have fun eating them.

When Uncle Bill moved in with us, he stayed in a bedroom right off the kitchen. He stayed in his bedroom almost all the time. I don't really know why he stayed in there all the time, unless it was because his eyesight just got worse and worse and he was afraid of falling or something.

I used to like to go in his room and visit with him and listen to his stories. One time, he dug in his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill and gave to me and told me to buy something I wanted with it. At the time, in school, the teacher (Daisy Manes) made us say Bible verses every Wednesday morning. I had a small New Testament the Gideons had handed out at school, but I thought a whole Bible would be even better so I used that dollar to buy a white Bible at the dime store in Forsyth. It cost one dollar. 

After I got home, Mom told me to go in and show Uncle Bill what I bought with my dollar, so I took it in and showed it to him. He couldn't see it but he held it and I told him what it was. He told me I couldn't have bought anything better for my dollar than that. It made me feel so good. 

As the years went by, Uncle Bill developed Cerebral Arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries in his brain, is the way the doctor described it. He started having times where he didn't know where he was, and thought he was out west panning for gold again. Sometimes he would take his cane and beat the floor with it and holler at an imaginary dog he thought was trying to steal his food.

Finally it got so that he was having those episodes more and more. Mom was afraid he would get up and roam around at night and fall down our basement stairs which were really close to his bedroom, or he might think one of us kids was the dog he was always trying to beat and scare away. She was afraid he might really hurt one of us, thinking we were that dog. 

So the hard decision was made to put him in the nursing home in Forsyth, the old one down by the lake. It was a nice surprise that one of the nurse's aides that worked there was a girl that lived up Caney close to where Uncle Bill used to live. She knew him and always made sure he got enough to eat and kept an eye out for him.

Dad got a call on September 20, 1970 that Uncle Bill had passed away. It was the first close family member that I knew that had passed away, and I took it pretty hard.

I remember the funeral.It was held at Bradleyville General Baptist Church. The casket was a light blue flocked, kind of like felt or something. Probably the cheapest they had, but I thought it was pretty. Glesco Roberts was the preacher. Burl and Helen Maggard and (I think ) Fern Hodges and Bobby Combs sang. I just remember one song they sang was "Farther Along". It has been one of my favorite songs ever since.

Uncle Bill was laid to rest in the Bradleyville Cemetery, close to his mother, Barbara Lawson and 3 of his sisters that died when they were young.

Alvin and Ivan Adams contacted Dad and insisted on buying Uncle Bill's headstone. They put flowers on his grave every Memorial Day until they passed away.

RIP Uncle Bill

Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie Richardson

 

I have heard about Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie Richardson all my life. Uncle Bill was Grandpa Toad's brother (8-9 years).

I have heard Mom and Grandma Laura and Aunt Betty talk about them, and Mom and Ginger, and Ginger has told me a few things about them. Aunt Maggie died in 1960 and Uncle Bill died in 1962, so I was pretty young when they died, 5 and 7 respectively. I'm sure I've seen them, probably been at their house, but don't remember them at all. I wish I did remember them. They sound like they were good good people. Another fact of being born later into the family.

Ginger remembers them well, of course. She says she used to go home with them and stay a week at a time. 

I knew their daughters, Estelle and  Eula Mae, or I should say, I knew their names and faces when I saw them. I didn't really know how we were related until years later. I think they were some of my mom's favorite cousins, anyway, it seemed to me they were. I remember them coming to dinners at Grandma and Grandpa's house, a lot of those big dinners we spread out on tables in the yard because it wouldn't all fit in Grandma and Grandpa's house. 

When Estelle and Eula Mae were there, they and Aunt Betty and Mom just talked and laughed and cut up and cut up and laughed and talked. I can remember it so well, they just had a wonderful time together.

Anyway. I love to look at Google Maps. I was looking at them tonight and thought I'd look at where Monger Cemetery was. I've been there several times and have looked at the headstones of my Richardson relatives, and one of two relatives from Dad's side of the family. It's a beautiful little cemetery beside the old Monger Church/School and it's being taken care of by someone and it looks really nice. Lots of walnut trees (Grandpa Toad and Grandma Laura are resting under a big walnut tree).

On the map, I was noticing that one of the nearby roads to Monger Cemetery was Johnson Road. Johnson was the maiden name of my Great Grandmother, Grandpa Toad's mother. Another road nearby was Reed Road, which was Aunt Maggie's maiden name.

It made me feel connected somehow, can't even explain it, but there was those family names right there on a map, and here I am, looking at them and recognizing who they were probably named after. It's kind of a weird feeling.

I know one time Ginger and I went to Monger Cemetery, and I was driving and didn't know where I was going, and it had changed a lot since Ginger had been there. I missed the road to go to the cemetery and took the next road. We thought we were going right until we came to an old steel bridge. We went across it and Ginger said "I don't think this is the right way to go to the cemetery, but I think I remember going across this bridge to go to Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie's house".

I'd like to go up there and drive the roads and imagine where they might have lived, might have walked on the same roads, all that stuff. Just feel like I was in the same place my relatives were years and years ago. 

Maybe I can talk Bob into driving around those roads, or one of the girls, I know any one of them would go with me. David also, but he's pretty far away to say, hey, come down and drive around with me! haha

I need to see Aunt Betty. 

Grandpa Richardson and Grandma Richardson (Toad and Laura)

 

We heard lots of stories growing up from Grandpa and Grandma both, Grandpa was a rambler, he'd start a story and back up a few times, tell a few side stories along the way, back up again if he'd forgot some detail, and boy did he tell the details. He was a great storyteller and if I would have written down or recorded him telling them I could have had a thick book of memories. But of course, when I was younger I didn't see the need of remembering the stories, and to my shame was a little impatient listening to the same stories over and over and tuned out sometimes.

One I remember Grandma or Grandpa telling was when they first met. Grandma was the new schoolteacher. I don't know where exactly, but Grandpa was raised up around Bruner, Mo so it was probably in that area. 

Anyway, so the story as I remember it was Grandpa and Grandma were at some kind of gathering (not together) and some of the other young men dared Grandpa to go up and ask the pretty new school teacher out. Whatever that meant back then, I'm sure they didn't go "out" like they did in my day or today, probably asked to sit with her or come see her at her house or some such thing. Anyway, of course, Grandpa took the dare and here we all are.....LOL

I think Grandpa must have been quite the rascal or daredevil because I remember another time his friends dared him to go up and pull the preacher's chin whiskers. So....yes, Grandpa did it. I can't imagine that ended very well, but I never heard the end of the story. I have wondered if the preacher was my great great grandfather, my grandma's grandpa, who was a preacher at Garrison, but I think maybe the time frame wasn't right for it to be him. I need to visit my Aunt Betty and ask her some of these stories and see if she knows more details. 

Grandma and Grandpa Richardson got married on April 27,1919, at the preachers house. He lived where Ollin and Pauline Lee lived for many years, north of Bradleyville on Highway 125. The dogwoods were blooming and in all their glory. I think it sounds like a wonderful time to be married.

In 1922 they were blessed with their first child, a girl they named Georgia Viola; in 1924, another girl they named Juanita Fern. Around 14 months later, in 1925, another girl they named Alma Francis. Then a girl named Betty Louise in 1927 and finally in 1934, a boy named Lotus Vernon. Grandma also lost 4 babies, two of them were a set of twins, and then two single births, but I have forgotten which were boys or girls. I had heard the twins were a boy and girl, but some of the family insists it was two boys, so I'm not sure.

Grandma was quite a prankster and one time my mom told of a time when Grandpa got his overalls really dirty, and Grandma made him take them off in the barn. She took them to the house and was supposed to bring out a clean pair. Then company came and she left Grandpa out in the barn without his overalls for quite a while. 

More later as I think of stories or hear them from Aunt Betty.

Our House at Bradleyville

We moved from "the place" which was over on Cedar Holler Road when I was almost 9 years old. My dad had bought one of the old store buildings there in old Bradleyville. 

That old building was probably 80-100 feet long and probably 30-40 feet wide. There were a few rooms in the back of where the store was that was living quarters and that is where we moved. 

When we first moved over there, there was a large kitchen, a room off of the west side of the kitchen that was first our living room, a room off the east side of the kitchen that my mom and dad used for their bedroom, and that was it. I slept on the couch in the living room to start with. 

 I know Mom and Dad slept out in the store building part of the building for awhile, and there was another bed or two out there, I slept out there some, and so did Ginger, Sue and Venessa when they stayed with us a few days here and there.

There was a basement under the living quarters that was probably 20 by 40 feet or so. It could have been a lot smaller but it always seemed huge to me. In the basement was a small bedroom right off the stairs, where some of us slept sometimes, and the light switch for this bedroom was at the top of the stairs, then into the main room of the basement, with a pull string light hanging right in the middle. Then at the end of the big room was a small room with a toilet in it, and and beside that room was a home made shower, two walls was the outside of the building with crumbly cement blocks, the wall next to the big room was a partition somebody had built, and there was a wall built between the shower and the room where the toilet was, with a 2 foot square window in the corner by the ceiling, in between the shower and the toilet room. Why? I guess we'll never know, but it made for some nervous showers and bathroom visits, for me at least....and in the farthest corner of the big basement room was a doorway into a storage room that was never used by us, I think it had junk in it, plus vampires and werewolfs and all manner of monsters just waiting to jump on me as I went through the big room.

It was always a little damp in the basement too, with concrete floors, so we always had to remember to wear shoes when we went down there or we might get a jiggling zap when we turned the pull light on or off.

Dad also rented a building across the (driveway) road from our building and ran his garage there. He wanted to move his garage into the end of our building, and so began remodeling shortly after we moved in.

Mom always wanted a large living room, so Dad sectioned off part of the building and built a big living room, probably about 20X20 or so, and a bedroom for him and mom that opened off the living room, with a large walk-in closet across the whole south end of their bedroom. 

Part of this time of remodeling was when we slept in the big big room of the store building, so there would be room to remodel.

After Dad got the living room and their bedroom completed, I got the old living room for my bedroom, minus a door. Now I didn't need a door, I was around 10-11 I guess, but I WANTED a door. I have always been a very modest person and I needed my privacy. It was around this time we went to an auction at the Cedar Point Resort in Rockaway Beach, and Dad bought me a big old ornate dark colored four poster wood bedroom suite. It is pretty, I still have it, although I don't use the headboard and footboard of the bed. But...I did use it then, in more ways than one. We sat the bed catty-corner across the corner of my bedroom, and later I pulled one side out about a foot away from the wall, and voila', I had my own private dressing room. Well, it wasn't all that private but it was better than my open door.

Sometime in this timeframe my great uncle, Bill Lawson, Dad's uncle, Grandma Mary's older brother, came to live with us. He was nearly blind and he slept in the room that Mom and Dad slept in when we first moved in. I never knew Uncle Bill very well before that but grew to love him like he was my grandpa. 

He lived with us a few years before he had to be put in the nursing home....another story.

The remodeling bug bit Dad again, and he decided to build a couple of bedrooms on the other side of the living room, with a short hall in between them that ended with a door into the garage part of the building. 

One of the rooms was mine, and right across the hall was a bedroom for my Grandma Mary, who had come to live with us when I was 10...another story.

Anyway, I finally had my own bedroom with a door! It didn't have a lock but it had a door! So...I wanted to paint the walls a neon green (which we called it lime green then, but it was neon..LOL) and have hot pink curtains. I thought it sounded so dreamy, so groovy, so hot....my mom said no and no matter how much I whined and griped about it, I never did get my green walls and hot pink curtains. 

When Dad got through with the bedrooms, he turned the other bedroom where Uncle Bill had stayed into a laundry room on the south side, and a bathroom opening off the laundry room on the north side. Toilet, bathtub with shower and a sink vanity across the other side, with a lighted mirror. Boy I thought we were right uptown. No more turning on the basement bedroom light at the top of the stairs, going down 13 steps, turning, going through 10 feet of darkness to get to the pull light with the monster room looming in the corner. No more taking a shower in the public feeling shower, no more using the shower and the bathroom with the window in the top corner. No more turning off that pull light on the way back through and running like the hounds of hell were on my heels until I got all the way up those steps. No wonder I didn't have a weight problem when I was young...

The room he turned into a laundry room only had a wall going halfway up behind the washer and dryer, and the top part was open to the stairwell, which also played a part in Uncle Bill's story...another story.

Dad turned the north side of the building into a garage, he could walk right from the house into the garage of the morning. It still had store shelves all along the west side of the room which was pretty handy too. I spent many happy hours playing in that garage. After Dad moved his garage into Orville Turners garage over in the new part of Bradleyville, that old garage space became a big storage room and me and my nieces and nephew spent many hours playing out there.

That was our house we lived in until I got married.

The Day I Had to Drive Home From Up Caney

I've been thinking a lot  lately about when I was a kid and went places with Ginger. 

She had Sue and Venessa who was 2 and 4 years younger than me, respectively, and I loved loved loved playing with them. 

Ginger, Sue and Venessa lived with us a few times, I don't know if it was days or weeks or months at a time, probably a little of all, but I loved it when they were there. 

Ginger was always going somewhere, to the movies, to visit somebody, stuff, and she asked me to go quite a bit. Looking back, I don't know if she really wanted me to go, if Sue and/or Venessa wanted her to take me along, or if she felt guilted into it, but those were some of the best times of my childhood.

I remember a time, I was probably around 12, we went up to Grandma Mary's old house. Dad had moved Grandma Mary  in with us a few years before, and Ginger was thinking about living there in her house. 

Grandma had an old wood cookstove in her house, and Ginger was determined to move it out. Of course, Sue and Venessa and I were determined to help her as much as we could, but none of us were up to the task.

Ginger threw her back out trying to move that heavy old cast iron stove, and was walking all bent over. 

We started back home and got maybe halfway back to 76 highway and Ginger pulled over.

She declared she hurt too bad and couldn't straighten up, so I would have to drive her Renault car home from where we were. 

Grandma lived about 4-5 miles up Caney. We were about halfway to Highway 76 so that was around 2 miles plus 6 more to Bradleyville.

I was excited and scared to death also. Ginger's little Renault had a 5 speed and I hadn't really driven much at all, and I didn't know if I could make it that far or not.

Ginger told me I had to, because she couldn't so goof that I was/am, I did it. 

I was really afraid I didn't know how to shift so Ginger told me when she said push in the clutch to push it in and she would shift for me. So that is what we did.

I did a pretty good job of driving if I do say so myself. We WERE in Ginger's little Renault, so that made it so much easier, like a tiny toy car...it looked something like this one....

I don't remember a lot of that trip home, I do remember coming up the hill past Maude Floyd's house and glancing out the passenger window as I was driving past.

It seemed that I could see clearly all the way down the bluff into Beaver Creek for the first time in my life, and it was big, and we were very high up on the bluff. No higher than it had ever been, but I was driving this time! 

We got home just fine. Everybody was glad we made it home. Nobody thought it was too unusual that I had driven home and all was well. 

Just one of many many times I was out with Ginger and the girls.

Grandma and Grandpa Richardson's Dinners

TODAY I was thinking about some of the dinners we used to have at Grandma and Grandpa Richardson's house. Usually it was one of their birthdays or an anniversary, but sometimes it was because relatives had come to visit from out west (Washington or California). Or maybe we just all wanted to be together.

When Gma and Gpa had one of these dinners, if it was warm outside, we would have the dinner outside. They would set up 2-3 tables in the front yard and everyone would sit outside in lawn chairs, the porch swing, on the ground, wherever they could find a comfortable place to sit.

Everyone brought a dish or two or three, and a dessert and there was always lots and lots of food. One funny thing I remember about these dinners, to my mind it seems that a LOT of people brought bean salads. These were "salads" that had none of the usual salad ingredients. There were green beans, kidney beans, maybe lima beans, usually 2-3-4 different kinds of beans, all mixed together and served cold from the can with some kind of vinegary dressing on them. I know as a kid I didn't like these bean salads but seems all the grown-ups liked them fine, cause seems like everyone brought one! I still don't figure I'd like one!

There was always several casseroles containing hamburger and/or macaroni and maybe with tomato sauce, different kinds of veggies, lots of corn, green beans and potato dishes, sweet potatoes, lots of pickles, sweet pickles, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, lime pickles, beet pickles, always different kinds of chips, potato chips in different flavors(Kitty Clover was the preferred brand), and probably Fritos. Doritos and tortilla chips hadn't been invented yet....to my knowledge anyway! Always lots of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers if it was summertime....cucumbers in salt water and cucumbers in vinegar...

There were always lots of cakes and pies. White cakes, yellow cakes with chocolate frosting, chocolate cakes, angel food (Maybe filled with cherry pie filling), apple pies, cherry pies, mincemeat pies, chocolatepies, coconut cream, banana, well, almost anything you could think of! 

We drank water, coffee, tea, milk, pop, whatever was there. 

It was a great time of visiting with our relatives, eating, visiting, eating, visiting, eating....all afternoon.

Sometime in the afternoon, Grandpa would bring out his fiddle and maybe a mandolin, or maybe his little electric organ, or everything he could think of and he would fiddle several tunes for us, and play each intstument a little. I liked his fiddle the best and Grandpa was known as a good fiddle player and played for many square dances. Sometimes one of the other relatives would bring a guitar and join in, maybe sing a little. Mom's cousin, Leon Boyd came by several times and sat in the yard and visit and play his guitar.

Then, as if we needed any more entertainment, Grandpa Toad would go get his ponies out of the pasture behind their house and bring them up to the yard for rides. Anybody, young or old, if you wanted to ride the pony, you got to ride the pony. Grandpa loved his ponies and all the attention.

All in all, these dinners are some of the most precious memories I have. I don't even know all the names of all the people that came to these dinners, most were relatives, but after Grandma and Grandpa passed on, everybody just drifted apart. Once in a while though, I meet up with some relative and we get to talking about these dinners, and it seems it is a precious memory to everyone that ever remembers one.

Ahhhhh......good times, good memories, precious, precious, precious.....