memoir

How to Raise Healthy Eaters in 5 Easy Steps

Kids

I am the girl in the second row with the dark sweater.  See how hungry we all look.

Connie and Marilyn's Toddler Pictures

Just look at the spindly legs on these poor, undernourished babies.  They suffered so!

Bill 2

Pictured above is the poor, hungry creature I sat on while I ate the only Twinkie from the day-old bakery box.  I think malnutrition stunted his growth.  He is only six foot four.  He is pictured here with my mother, the woman who deprived us all of delicious goodies.

My mother was a child-rearing genius.  She taught me her fool-proof plan for raising healthy-eaters, though she never sat down to delineate it for me.  She was too busy trying to get dinner on the table.  I’ve done that for all of you.  You are welcome.

  1. There were five of us kids.   Mother’s food budget was minimal.  She put the food on the table, believing no child starved with food available. We ate like pigs in slop because should we we tarry, one of the other pigs got it.  It would be a long, hungry time till the next meal.
  2. Kids don’t eat what isn’t there.  She only bought and served nutritious foods, which we hated, by the way, but not as much as hunger.  Our diet was based on vegetables supplemented by a modicum of chicken.  Mother checked the markdowns and specials first.  Though she bought many dented cans, she inspected them carefully for leakage, swelling, and signs of spoilage.  It must have been a great disappointment, but she never managed to poison any of us.  I often showed up at the table disgusted again to see beans, peas, greens, corn, rice, potatoes, corn, squash, spinach, tomatoes, and a tidbit or no meat on the table, again.  A time or two, I tried turning my nose up at it.  Mother’s response killed that.  “Fine, maybe there will be a little left for supper.  Now start on the dishes while we eat.”
  3. Leftovers were snacks.  That meant, you might get a leftover biscuit, piece of cornbread, or flapjack if you beat the other kids off the bus. You had to be pretty hungry to go for flapjack.  Mother’s flapjacks were disgusting.  Sometimes, if she caught it on special, Mother bought peanut butter and saltines.  We burned through those in a day or two.  We made quick work  Once in a while Mother made popcorn, but that was a family snack to be shared by the whole family while watching “Gunsmoke.”  Remember “Gunsmoke?”
  4.  Dessert was rare, usually reserved for Sunday’s and holidays.  No cake, pie, cookies, lingered long.  On rare blessed weeks, she went by the bread store to pick up a box of day-old bread, pies, cakes, hot dog buns, and various and sundry cast offs.  One of my fondest memories is finding a lone, moldy Twinkie near the bottom of one of those boxes.   I sat on my brother and ate it without chewing.  If by some miracle a goody survived the initial family attack, the last piece had to be saved for Daddy.  God help the misbegotten fool dared go there.
  5. Finally, she shared her pain when company dropped in for the WHOLE weekend polishing off the carefully stewarded foodstuffs that would have barely let her squeak through till payday, anyway.  We needed to know that she would have to kite a check to get some dry beans, flour, shortening, and that a couple of chickens in the barnyard have a date with destiny this week.  It stimulated our flagging appetites!

Sometimes, I’d hear Mother’s friends complaining that their kids were picky eaters.  Once, just once, I’d have loved to hear her defend us saying we were, too, but, no!  Invariably she’d crassly complain, “My kids eat anything I put in front of them!”  She had no pride at all.

Cousin Wayne Saves the Day (Part 2 of Robert Gordon, Wayne, Robbing Nanny, and Look Out Pope)

family6

https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2015/08/17/robert-gordon-wayne-robbing-nanny-and-look-out-pope/

I wrote of my my mother, Kathleen’s laundry list against her cousin’s Robert Gordon and Wayne Perkins just the other day, mentioning her intention to tell Robert Gordon what a hellion should she ever met him again, even if he were Pope.  It’s fortunate she never had that little conversation with his partner-in-crime, Wayne, since she found herself in need of his friendship one day early in her marriage.

Daddy was a busy man who had priorities.  These included good times with his brothers and brothers-in-law and manly business.  That being said, we spent endless weekends with his family, careening out our drive on Fridays after and not often not getting back till late on Sunday night, despite the fact that there were young children to be bathed, homework to be done, and the week ahead to be prepared for.  That was woman’s business.  Fortunately, he was not a woman.

At any rate, at the close of school every year, Mother would break the news that yet again, she was going to visit her parents this summer.  They’d fight a while till they’d reach an impasse.

Outraged, he’d insist she wasn’t going.  She’d go on making her plans.  Finally he threw out a challenge, “Well, If you go, you’re not coming back.”

She went on with her packing. “We have to be at the train by two.”

Defeated, he asked.  “When will you be back?”

“Pick me up two weeks from today.  I’ll travel through the night so I won’t have to wrestle with the baby so much.”

Two weeks later, when we got off the train, Daddy wasn’t there.  Mother was disgusted, but not too surprised.  He was always late.  At nine, she called Aunt Julie who told her Daddy and Uncle Parnell had just left there to see a man about a dog, but had mentioned he was supposed to pick her up.  He was just going to be a couple of hours late.  Of course, Mother was furious, but had no choice but to wait.  She called Aunt Julie back later, who hadn’t seen the men.  By eleven she had thirty cents left, we were starving, and the baby was guzzling the last bottle.  Mother wracked her brain till she remembered her Cousin Wayne lived nearby.  She looked his number up and called.  Miraculously, he and his wife were  home.  Upon hearing her plight, he picked us up at the train, took us home for lunch, fixed the baby up with a bottle and a nap, and let Mother use the phone to tell Aunt Julie she’d found a ride, after all.  It was mid-afternoon by now.  Daddy still hadn’t gotten back from seeing about that dog.  Cousin Wayne kindly took us home.  Daddy was delighted to see us when he finally came in with his new hunting dog and not surprised at all that Mother had somehow gotten a ride home from the train station.  What a guy!  I don’t know why she never killed him.

Heartbreaking Story of the Red-Headed Baby

babyprint1xAccording to gossip, Redheaded Connie and Callie were reputed to have been left on their Pentecostal aunt’s doorstep at birth. This fascinating tidbit guaranteed my interest.  I imagined them lying in a basket, long waist-length braids dangling from a basket, dusting the ground. They were high-school girls when I was in first grade, so I never gave them much thought beyond that. Continue reading →

Robert Gordon, Wayne, Robbing Nanny, and Look Out Pope!

R G Holdaway Family with Johnny Bell early 1930'sL to R Johnny Bell(cousin) Mary Elizabeth Perkins (Lizzie) with Kathleen Annie Lee Holdaway, Roscoe Gordon Holdaway, John Arthur Holdaway about 1930  (note how well-dressed the children are and Roscoes’s mended overalls.  I have one of these chairs in my writing room today.  Kathleen helped Roscoe replace the bottom in 1932.  That story will be in her memoirs, soon to be published.)

Mother is eighty-seven.  She swears if she ever meets up with her cousin, Robert Gordon, she intends tell him what a hellion he was, even if he is the Pope and has a beard down to his knees.  Well, I am pretty sure our Pope wasn’t previously known as Robert Gordon and doesn’t have a beard down to his knees, but if he was, and does, please tip him off.   A whacked-out little eight-seven year old lady down in Louisiana might knock his block off if she gets a chance.  From the many stories I’ve heard over the years, I know Robert Gordon had a little brother, Wayne, who was also horrible, but nowhere nearly as mean as Robert Gordon.

Robert Gordon’s initial transgression that put him on Mother’s dirt list was not his fault.  He was her Grandma’s favorite.  Her grandma paid no attention whatsoever to Mother, or most of her other grandchildren, openly doting on Robert Gordon with warm waves of affection washing over his brother Wayne.  No matter that her cousins had lived next door to her grandma from the day of their birth.  Mother, hereinafter known as Kathleen, was still steamed to see them with the run of the place, their toys littering Grandma’s yard, and watch them cuddled in Grandma’s lap, when she was never noticed.

Kathleen’s prized possession was a little wagon that her father had acquired second-hand and painstakingly repaired by the broken tongue. The very next tme Robert Gordon visited, he ferreted out her precious wagon, sneaked the hatchet from the kindling pile, and smashed the tongue to smithereens so effectively that the wagon was a total loss.  The destructive act wasn’t discovered till after his departure.  The family later remembered hearing banging when Robert Gordon had claimed time to go to the toilet.  From that day forward, Kathleen hated him.image

Kathleen had but a handful of toys, mostly homemade or hand-me-down, so of course she cherished every one.  She had learned, to her great sorrow, that Robert Gordon and Wayne would steal, given the chance.  Before they left after a visit, her older brother, who usually only lived to torment her, held the boys upside down by ther and shook them, while she retrieved her toys raining to the ground.

One one visit, Robert Gordon who was younger than she, but bigger, entertained himself by hiding and jumping on Kathleen’s back as she rounded corners, pushing her to the ground and enjoying the ride to the ground as she fell face-first into the dirt and muck of the yard.  John helped her plot, so she was ready on his next visit.  As she pranced alluringly around the corner, he jumped.  She threw herself backwards,  the back head bashing satsfyigly into his face and nose.  Blood and snot poured from his nose and split lip as he ran bawling for his mama.  It was difficult to convince anybody she had started it when he’d jumped on her back, though he tried.

The most memorable, and adult-infuriating trick Robert Gordon and Wayne ever pulled of was The Great Goat-Milk Robbery.  Though they were as poor as any farmers during The Great Depression, her parents were excellent providers.  They had but one cow, but they kept a goat or two as a secondary source of milk.  Cows don’t produce milk just before and immediately after calving.  Milk production drops drastically during periods of low feed availability such drought.  At any rate all live stock is preciouos and to be treated well.  The Evil Robert Gordon and Wayne were beyond the Pale.  They slipped away from the visiting adults and robbed poor Nanny Goat of her milk in a way that no Christian ever should.  The repulsed neighbors were watching horrified while one boy held the goat and the other nursed, just like he was a kid goat.  Kathleen’s daddy and mama and the horrid boy’s parents got there just as Nanny was being rescued and flogged by an outraged neighbor.  Robert Gordon and Wayne’s parents left in disgrace and Kathleen’s family had another long, enjoyable talk about how hideos they Devil-ridden were. Poor Nanny didn’t give milk for three days.

This is the same chair from vintage picture above, one of my most treasured belongings.

Bear on chair

Lovely Old Barn

Old barn

Though my father saw a barn a’building, I saw a cathedral of rough-hewn lumber rising in the lot behind our house. Mr. Bradley, a crotchedy old grandpa in khakis, showed up about daybreak every morning for coffee, then shuffled on to his barn building. He and a helper worked all day till Daddy and a couple of his buddies took over and worked on as Continue reading →

The Great Doll Funeral

Vintage baby doll

https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2015/08/14/rocky-and-the-great-doll-funeral/

The same Christmas I got Rocky the Rocking Horse, the best Christmas present of my young life, and Monkey, my sidekick(until I left him outside for the dogs to chew up),  I got a big hard, plastic baby-doll with molded hair.  It came with a bottle, was dressed in pajamas and had exactly one diaper. That diaper was history once Mother demonstrated its amazing ability to pee its diaper. It made me mad when I saw the baby doll, anyhow, since I’d told Mother, “I don’t want a doll.  I hate dolls.”  The wet diaper was the last straw.  I pitched it into the bowels of the toy box to keep company with Tinker Toys, broken crayons, and last year’s despised doll.

Before Christmas this year when Mother asked what I wanted, my list included a live pony, cowboy boots, pistols and holsters and a real monkey in a cowboy suit.  My list did not include a doll.  Insanely, she had insisted, “But, every little girl has to get a doll.  Now what kind do you want?”

Remembering last year’s floppy baby doll, I tried to come up with something I could stomach.  I heard girls at school say they wanted a Bride Doll.  In my complete disinterest, I forgot exactly what kind of doll to ask for. “Uh, I GUESS a wedding doll would do.”  I didn’t want one,  but at least it wasn’t a stupid baby doll. When another baby doll showed up under the tree, I was disgusted, thinking I had confused Mother into thinking I wanted a “wetting doll, not a “wedding doll.”    Daddy handed me my final gigantic gift from under the tree.  Since I’d already gotten Rocky the Rocking Horse as a pony substitute and a stuffed monkey instead of real-live monkey in a cowboy suit, this was my last shot at pistols and a holster set.  I ripped into the package, and horror of horrors, discovered a tin tea-set with a Dutch Boy and Girl on a background of blue and yellow tulips.  Mother went into raptures over it.

“Oh, I always wanted a tea-set like this when I was a little girl.”  Well, if she’d had that tea-set and I had a feather up my butt, we’d have both been tickled to death.  Fortunately, I’d learned long ago to keep my mouth shut when I didn’t like presents.  Rocky and Monkey and I went on our way, making the best of that Christmas.  That tea-set, still in the box, went under my bed.

Months later, one of the neighbors died.  I didn’t get to go to the funeral, of course, but my cousin did.  It sounded pretty entertaining to me.  We decided to stage our own.  I scavenged through the toy box and found my Christmas doll and dug the tea-set out from under my bed.  Dumping the dishes, I lined the box with one of Mother’s better towels and we prepared the body for burial.  My cousin Sue and I conducted the services, complete with plenty of hymns and wailing.  My brother Billy and Cousin Troy attended, but only because we promised to provide penny candy afterward.  It was a lovely service, the burial site mounded up with gorgeous roses we’d rounded up from the bushes belonging to Mrs. Dick, the seventh-grade teacher who lived next to us.  Mother made us return the roses to Mrs. Dick and apologize, though I can’t imagine they’d have been much use to her since we’d snapped them all off right below the head.  There would have been enough of them to fill a tub for a romantic rose bath, though I seriously doubt the lady was in the mood judging from the expression on her face when we apologized.

Rocky and the Great Doll Funeral

Rocky 2I’ve often wondered if bipolar is the normal state of childhood.  Since adulthood, I’ve never experienced the wild exhilaration nor the depths of despair I felt as a child.  As Christmas approached, I’d be wild with anticipation: excitement at Christmas lights, sparkles of snow on Christmas Cards, and the trip to the woods for a Christmas tree had me near hysteria.  By the time I was hustled off to bed Christmas Eve, sleep seemed impossible.  It seemed I’d lie awake for hours, peeking often for a hint of light through the curtains, sure morning must be here.  Finally, we’d wake Mother and Daddy for the most glorious day of the year.  Inevitably, in the way of greedy children, once the joy of dismantling all that had been carefully prepared, I looked at the doll, stuffed monkey, rocking horse, tea set, red sweater, plastic box of barrettes and pearl bracelet from Grandma scattered among the wrappings and thought, “Is this all?  I asked Santa for a pony, not a rocking horse!  I hated dolls and tea sets and had never voluntarily worn a sweater nor brushed my hair.”

I was devastated, feeling I couldn’t go on, till Daddy told me to give Rocky, the Rocking Horse a try.  He was a wonder on springs I could get some real action out of. Rocky and I were quickly moved to the porch where we could bounce without moving the furniture. Monkey and I must have ridden Rocky ten-thousand miles before I outgrew him.  Oh yes, I eventually left Monkey out in the yard for the dogs to chew up. Mother found his dismembered body later but never told me the sad tale.  I thought the doll and tea-set were a total waste till one of the neighbors died and I found out about funerals.  I ditched the dishes and the box made a great coffin.  We had a wonderful service for the doll.  A lovely time was had by all.

You Used to Be Beautiful!

Kathleen Holdaway in flowered dress0002One warm afternoon in late May, 1960, Billy and I were lying on the living room floor as Mother reclined a few minutes with her feet up wearing the heavy surgical weight stockings the doctor had ordered.  She was  six months into a difficult pregnancy with her last child,and was supposed to be off her feet.  She had spent a good portion of the morning tying to keep an eye on her fourteen-month-old, Connie, while trying to coax twelve-year old Phyllis and me at ten to do a little housework, help with Connie, and even get a little work out of seven year old Billy, while keeping him out of trouble.  Phyllis was watching Connie.  We were all terminally lazy, slacking off at the first excuse.  None of us had any intention of doing anything we could avoid.

As we dawdled at her feet on the floor in the draft of the attic fan, one of us pulled out an old photo album.  I quickly found a picture of her made her senior year of high school, the peak of her youth and beauty.  “I graduated thirteen years ago today,” she remarked smilingly.

In my infinite wisdom, I proclaimed, “Oh Mother, you used to be beautiful!”

I turned for her smile, only to see a snarling, slobbering, swollen beast ready to pounce on me in rage! “”Used to be beautiful!  Let’s see what you look like when you have five kids in twelve years!  Put this stuff up, right now.  Linda, you take your smart mouth and get those dishes washed.  Phyllis, you put a pot of beans on for supper.   Billy, you…”

By the way, this is not the picture in question.  That one mysteriously disappeared

I Might Not Be Right but….

Growing up on a farm in the sixties had its bright spots.  Farm life was long on work, but we were at liberty to swim and fish in the pond and ride horses when we weren’t working. My brother and I counted on riding late Saturday afternoons and every Sunday after church with friends, then maybe swimming later in the day in the summer.  It was the high point of our week.  Winter wasn’t so bad because there wasn’t so much work and there were school and friendships to look forward to.  That tells you a lot about how much social life we had, doesn’t it?

When I was a young child, I adored Daddy who was very indulgent and loving, but as I aged out as a small child and became a girl, I felt he withdrew his love.  This was extremely cruel and painful.  I felt as though my heart had been amputated.

Daddy was fiercely stern, certainly not worried about being a friend to his children.  He was proud of taking a stand, always being right.  More than once, I remember him him saying, “I may not be right, but I am never wrong,”  feeling it was a weakness to back down.

By the time I was a teenager on the farm, the work on the farm was unrelenting, particularly during the summer months. My brother and I spent hours every day at tasks Daddy had assigned us and with him when he was home, an altogether miserable experience. Through the misery of the long week, we looked forward to our Saturday and Sunday afternoons off.  I even looked forward to church, remarkable for me, since I’d never cared for the monotony of church, but it was a rare chance to see friends over the summer. Our only socialization was family activities.

One Sunday I was impatiently helping Mother cooking Sunday dinner after church, just like always I had to, wild to be cut loose to go riding, when I saw Daddy open the pasture gate for the neighbor girl, Kim on her horse and her friend Susie on “my horse, Pixie ” while I was still stuck in the kitchen, like a mindless drudge. No one had even had the consideration to mention the plan to me, though all three knew I rode every Sunday. I was livid.  I went straight to Daddy and asked if it was true, “Did you really loan my horse without saying anything to me?”  It’s a wonder he didn’t knock my teeth out!

“I did.  I bought that horse.  I pay for every bite that goes in its mouth and yours.  That horse and everything on this place belongs to me.”

I turned and went back in the house, more determined than ever, that no one would ever own me.

Later that evening, I had the shock of my life.  My father came as close to apologizing as he ever did.  He said.  “I should have asked you if you were going to ride before I loaned that horse.”  I cried as I wrote this.  Maybe he was softer than I thought.  I wish I could talk this over with him today.  I know I have hurt my kids without meaning to.

“He did.”

“