Molly stared with fury at the reverend. “Perhaps you are right! This is not my child and his care has put me to a good deal of trouble. I already have three children. Out of concern for this nameless baby, I took him in but clearly he would be better off elsewhere. I’ll tell Rosemarie to ready him for travel and the two of them can go with you!”
“No! No! No!” protested Reverend Bennett. I can’t take charge. My wife is sickly and can’t care for a baby.”
“Rosemarie can care for the child. All you have to do is provide room and board and deal with The Assembly concerning Rosemarie. I will be glad to have both off my hands. My thanks to you.” Having had her say, she returned home and left the reverend sputtering.
Walking in her kitchen door, she snapped at Rosemarie. “Get yours and the baby’s things. You’re moving to Reverend Bennett’s. He’ll be expecting you.”
Rosemarie burst into tears. “I can’t stand that old man. Can’t I stay here?”
Molly’s anger made her cruel. “I guess you can go back to jail if you prefer. You can work that out with the Reverend and the Assembly. You need to hurry to get there before dark.”
In a few minutes, Rosemarie left with the baby and her poor few belongings. The children wailed at seeing them go. “Children, hush! I told you the baby was not ours to keep. The reverend is going to try to find his family. Wouldn’t you be sad if you lost your family?” This did little to mollify them.
At one desperate point, while Eddie was about the slow business of dying at Grandma Swain’s, Mettie gratefully moved her family to her brother Albert’s recently acquired farm, miles and miles from town. Red dust fogged up with the rare passing conveyance. In foul weather, the red dirt road was impassable. There was no possibility of the kids attending school since the nearest bus stop was ten miles away where the dirt road joined a hard surface road. School attendance was not mandatory at this time.
Mettie’s focus was on survival. Fortunately, in addition to the farmhouse he and his wife moved into, a battered, unpainted house was available for the poor band. Had Mettie not been in such need, he would have used it as a barn Again, it was free. They could get milk and butter from Albert’s cows if Mettie helped with the milking. Albert’s wife, Mary, kindly passed along a hen with twelve chicks and young rooster. They could eat from Mary’s garden if she and the girls helped with gardening and canning. Of course they would! They settled in the hovel where wind sailed through the rickety walls and rain poured through the leaky roof. The uncles put the boys to cutting and splitting wood for shingles, then set them to roofing. A toilet leaned crazily out back, but the deep well provided cool,clean water. Of course the rural farm had no utilities, no matter, since Mettie hadn’t funds to pay. Her brothers, Willie and Albert, did what they could to help, from plowing her garden, providing her a pig to fatten and slaughter in the fall. Willie traded a fine sow with a litter of pigs and gifted her bony milk cow. Fortunately, when the old cow freshened, it was a heifer, ensuring Mettie would have a young cow to replace the old one at her inevitable This was a Godsend. A family without a milk cow was in trouble.
When Eddie eventually died in 1937, the four younger children qualified for seventy-four dollars a month Aid to Dependant Children. Mettie was able to move to a better house near town so the little girls could go to school. Mettie had a penchant for moving till the day she died. Daddy said she’d start crying and nothing would satisfy her till she got to move. No doubt, she had mood issues.
The same year the family got on “relief,” her eldest son joined Civilian Conservation Corp for which he was provided clothes, wages, food, and lodging for working on government conservation projects. He was paid the princely sum of thirty dollars a month, twenty-five of which went directly to his mother. Three years later, the second son joined. The boys had never lived dressed or lived so well. At thirteen, Daddy was six feet tall. He was able to pass for fifteen, snagging a job on an nearby oil rig as a night watchman. He slipped home most nights to eat a late supper. All three boys had given up school long ago to look for work. At any rate, Daddy said they couldn’t face the taunting of hateful kids over their bedraggled clothes.
My father is boy in front row holding hatEddie Swain
On the last day of her old life, Ma sent nine-year-old Neeley to the store with some butter and eggs to trade for baking soda and needles. As she left the store with her penny candy and Ma’s things, she saw smoke hanging over the trees. To her horror, when she topped the ridge, flames were leaping in the field between their house and Uncle Jep’s. She fairly flew the last few hundred yards, calling for Ma at the top of her lungs. Tearing into the front room, she found Ma slumped in the rocker, her arm hanging limp at her side with spittle running out the corner of her mouth. She shook Ma, then pulled her arm with no response. Desperate to rouse Ma for escape, she dashed her with a dipper full of water. Ma didn’t wake up!
Threatened by the approaching fire, she realized she had to get Uncle Jep. Racing barefoot toward his house, she skirted the actively burning areas, arriving to find him and Aunt Lottie gone. Desperately, she headed toward the nearest neighbor’s place, only to meet neighbors rushing to help put out the fire. Crying, she told them of Ma’s troubles. Most went on to fight the fire, but Mr. Jones and Mr. Bilieu went to check on Ma. Mr. Bilieu took Neeley to his house for his wife to tend her burned feet. They got Dr Crisp out to see Ma. He came later to check on Neeley bringing sad news. Ma was dead.
Uncle Jep came for her. She had to deal with the agony of her burned feet along with the greater pain of losing Ma and her home. Uncle Jep loved and welcomed her, but Aunt Lottie had the burden of her care. The overworked mother of four was quick with the switch and criticism. It was not an easy transition for the grieving girl going from darling grandchild to “another mouth to feed.” The farm wife already had more work and worry than she could handle before Neeley was foisted on her. It was not a good situation for any of them.
I don’t write much about the history of my father’s side of the family because they simply didn’t have the strong oral tradition that my mother’s family did. This is such a loss. My paternal grandmother was abandoned by her mother, raised by her grandmother till she was nine. She spent the rest of her childhood in the home of an uncle whose wife made Continue reading →
Nutsrok 