Since I am telling the story of my family, I have to begin with my mom. At seventy, she has been a character her entire life, well since she was 15.
The first house my dad built for my mom was all he could manage in 1952. A two room tar paper shack with no electricity and an honest to goodness two-hole outhouse complete with Sears & Roebuck catalog. Mom cooked on a 4 burner woodstove, which also heated the house in the winter. We had kerosene hurricane lamps for light and a well with a handle pump. We had to keep a small container of water nearby to prime the pump in order to get the water to flow. Dad built this house because mom didn’t want to live with my dad’s mom all of her married life. While it wasn’t the greatest house, my mom loved it.
Once after a night out at the drive in theater, mom lit a kerosene lamp, it sputtered; she threw it out the window because she swore it was trying to talk to her.
When I was five and my sister was three, dad had a Jim Walter’s house built for mom. Three bedrooms and indoor plumbing, WOW, had we ever moved uptown. Actually it was just up the hill but, if possible, mom loved it even more. Dad had it built to 50% finished, leaving lots of ‘got to’ finish projects. Mom learned how to hammer and installed pine board sub floors, complete with knotholes (one in the kitchen under the table, more about that knothole a little later).
When the house was floored, we moved in, with electricity too! After, we moved in, before the first interior wall was finished, mom had dad outside to build a (hold on) a chicken house and yard! 20 hens and a rooster soon took up residence in the only finished part of the new homestead. All winter, we had fresh eggs for breakfast.
My sister and I didn’t like scrambled eggs or eggs period. We would push those eggs around our plates until mom and dad finally left the kitchen and down that knothole under the table, went those eggs. We were excited; we had finally found the answer to eating yucky eggs. It lasted about 2 weeks. Mom left and then came back about 2 minutes later, caught in the act, egg-handed.
Spring came and mom decided to move the chicken house because she wanted to plant her tomatoes there. So out to the back yard, where mom had decided the vegetable garden would be, went the three of us. My sister and I, well let’s just say I started early, chased the chickens, while mom started taking down the chicken house. My sister and I watched, horrified as mom used the claw part of the hammer to pull out a nail and hit herself squarely between the eyes with the claw hammer. Blood flowed and mom had knocked herself out. We thought she was dead, my sister sank down and held mom’s hand and cried while I ran for the party line telephone. Thank goodness someone was on the line because I didn’t know how to dial. “HELP my mom has killed herself!!” I screamed into the phone. One of dad’s cousins called an ambulance and came down to the house to assess the situation. The ambulance arrived, stopped the bleeding and used some butterfly closures on mom’s forehead between her eyes and we got her into bed. Dad’s cousin put an icepack on mom’s forehead and took care of my sister and me until dad got home.
Little did we know that this was just the beginning of mom’s projects, there was a problem with the propane gas tank so mom decided to take it to my dad at work so he could fix it. I seem to remember a wooden stub forced into the gas outlet and then it was loaded into the trunk of the car and off to Keesler AFB we went, so dad could fix the gas tank. When mom asked the guard at the gate which way to where my dad worked he pointed straight ahead, so straight ahead we went, right across the runway with a C130 headed straight at us. Dad met us at the hanger where he worked and quickly got us off the base.
Not all of mom’s projects have involved danger or her getting hurt but there have been enough. She had planted a fig tree right outside the kitchen window. Over the years, the tree grew into a very large tree. Mom thought the best way of picking the figs on the top was to sit on the edge of the roof of the house and reach over and pick the figs. The only problem was; she leaned over too far, fell off the roof and broke her ankle.
The driveway is flanked on each side by a Japanese fir tree. The tree on the right as you look from the road to the house had a very low branch that brushed against the roof of cars when they drove into the driveway. Mom decided the limb needed to go, so she got out a ladder and a handsaw, put the ladder against the limb, climb up the ladder with the handsaw and sawed off the limb, the limb the ladder was propped up against.
A few years ago, mom decided to move a wall with a door in it. My brother had built the header for the door from two extremely heavy 2X4’s and only 2 heavy duty screws held it up. He hadn’t intended for the wall and door to ever be moved. He had just gotten back from 7 years in Kwajalein, Marshall Islands and had forgotten mom’s penchant for change. Anyway, she removed the two heavy duty screws and clunk, yep, right on the head. My sister took her to the hospital because she had heard a crack when the header hit mom’s head. A friend of mine had an extra hard hat that he sent to my mom, she won’t wear it.
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Reviewed by LadyJtalks LadyJzTalkZone
7/2/2007
The ladder on the branch that got sawed off had me laugh'in. Can't wait for more either. Lady J
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