My niece Heather posted a comment while ago and wanted to know where we lived during the time following her dad Johnnie’s birth and the time Pat was born. This is in response to that question, but it is also a follow up to my post about Christmas and Other Memories.
Johnnie was born on the New Minden Road in Bossier, City, La. when he was about two years old we moved for a short time to an old store building which had been converted into a little house. It was called the Crow’s nest and it looked like a bears den. As I remember it was all gray because it hadn’t been painted inside or out. It looked like an old store building on the side of the Old Minden Road. ( The Old Minden Road and the New Minden Road intersected not very far from the Crow’s nest.) It had three rooms, a living room. a bedroom and a kitchen. Our nearest neighbors was a very nice family of what we then called colored people, now African American. During the war a family or almost anyone for that matter, had to take what they could get. There was a housing shortage, and landlords didn’t want to rent to families with children nor to soldiers. They really didn’t even want their daughters dating soldiers or airmen, since Barksdale Field was an air field as well as an army base. Each Military had its own Air Force at the time. But I digress.
I was in the second grade and the school bus picked me up at the door. Uncle Rudolph had met a girl named Marteal??? who rode the same bus. She really made my life miserable at the time because everyday, she had questions about him. However, she made up for it at Christmas that year by giveing me a little pot of artificial flowers, but again I digress.
Sometime after we moved in Mother must have gotte pregnant with my first little sister. Daddy was working in the oil fields then and I don’t remember whether Mother worked or not. I do remember that we were living there when I went to my first circus and my first fair. I also remember burning my leg after one of those events on a little wood heater that we used to heat the bedroom. There were some pleasant things that hppened that year as you can tell, but there were some unpleasant ones as well. Daddy drank really bad when he was home from the oil fields. I have since wondered if that was because of the hours he had to work when they were drilling. He was a test tool operator and he was a perforater. Now what those were I don’t know, but they worked and didn’t get much sleep while until the well came in and was capped. He sometimes drove home in his sleep he said. Anway, Mother was pregnant. We didn’t have running water in the house and we had an old outdoor toilet. The neighbors who lived behind us and over the railroad track let us get our water from their well. They also kept us, if Mother wasn’t home.
When Mother was nearly at full term, she took us one evening, to get water. I guess Tommie and Wallace were at the Crow’s Nest because I only rememer Johnnie and I going with her. After filling the bucket with water, she alternated holding my hand and Johnnie’s and I alternated holding his and hers. She would shift the bucket of water and as we crossed the railroad track she told me that she felt something in her stomach drop.
When we got home, she later told me, she walked the floor all night having what she called the labor pains. Daddy came home sometime that night. The next morning after she got me off to school, Daddy took her to the doctor and the boys to Johnnie Mae, my cousin.
The doctor she saw that morning was the “Old” Dr. Young. He checked her over and told her she was just having gas pains. Then he sent her home. She had those pains for almost two weeks before she went back. this time, she was the “Young” Dr. Young, the son. He told her that he couldn’t find a heart beat and that she had to go to the hospital as soon as she could. Since Christmas was upon us she and Daddy had to make some calls to make sure all of us were cared for and that Santa Claus came. They first called my grandparents in Louisville, MS and made arrangements for Wallace and Johnnie to stay with them through Christmas. she sent Tommie and me to Aunt Ora Mae and Uncle Johnnie, who lived in our old apartment on Delhi Street nar downtown Bossier City. Ma Carrie, my grandmother, told me that the little boys would stand at the window and cry for Mother and Daddy. I never knew why we had to be separated at Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, Mother went in the hospital. She was in labor and delivery for 18 hours. I don’t know what took so long unless they had to induce labor and it just took that long to clean her out after the baby was born, so there woudn’t be any infection.
When the baby girl was born, only Daddy was allowed to see her. she ahd been dead for two weeks and her little body was beginning to decay. Daddy said her little face was black. he had to go and pick out the little coffin by himself and arrange for her grave site. Over the years I have wondered where she was buried because Daddy went by himself to bury her. She was dressed in the little clothes they had taken to bring her in and wrapped her in a littl blanket. Later he told me that he cried and that he was the only one there at the grave site.
I remember what I got for Christmas that year, but I had been planning on Mother bringing home a new baby. I remember what it was because it was the first gift I ever saw her buy. We were at then 5 and 10 Cent store with Johnnie Mae. I had seen Mother looking a doll with long black hair. She was dressed in a black and white striped dress with a white apron. Mother made me go stand outside and I saw the clerk take the doll down off the shelf and a few minutes later she and Johnnie Mae came out of the store with package in hand. She must have given it to Johnnie Mae to keep for her.
On Christmas morning that same doll was under the Christmas tree. I don’t remember wahat ehe boys got and I don’t remember all of us going back out to the Crow’s nest.
However we must have because I remember a warm spring Saturday afternoon and the boys and I were at home by ourselves. We had found a bos of prophlactics and thought they were balloons. We took them outside and blew them all up, nice and clear white balloons. They were all over the yard next to the hous when Mother and Daddy came home. I don’ remember what was said or done about them, but I do remember that Mother got pregnant with another baby that spring. It had to have been May or early early June because Pat was born in February of 1946.
Early that next fall, we moved to Shed Road across the street from the apartments where many of the military people lived. We had lived for a short time when I was eight further out on the Minden Road, but that was another story. By that time Uncle Rudolph had gotten out of Service and married Marteal and they lived in the Garage Apartment next door to our House. Our section of Shed Road was called Whittington Road becasue the little old lady who lived in the main house was, of course, Mrs. Whittington. Tommie was also six years old by this time and he started to first grade. I can rememeber that he was having a very hard time in school. Mother would try to help him with his spellimng words. He could spell the word “somethiong”, but he could not get his little mind around the word “be”. We had a shower in that house. We had a nice kitchen and a big, fenced yard with a “stile” over the top of the fence, because it was surrounded by a cow pasture . The owners of the pasture didn’t want the cows getting into someone’s yard. The only road to get to Shed Road was to go over the stile and down a gravel path or around Mrs. Whittington’s yard and back down the street. We went because there were other kids to play with and a swing and slide as well as a play area. Down the road a little further was a canal or small bayou as we called them then with logs everywhere. We would go down there soemtime to play.
We played softball beside the house. Tommie might not have been able to spell “be”, but he could plant seeds anywhere and they would come up. He was going to be a farmer with a green thumb and I was going to be a nurse. The other boys were too little to decide what they wanted to do when they grew up. Wallace was four and Johnnie was two. Every Saturday morning we listend to “Little Buster Brown and His Little Dog, Tigh” bring us fairy tales on the radio. They were the sponsors. Anyway that was also a day for chores. I remember getting down on Tommie and I getting a pan of warm water and cloth and a knife from the kitchen (not a sharp one, just one we called a case knife) and having to geyt down on our knees and washing and cleaning baseboards in the house, while we listened to “Lets Pretend”or “Sky King” or some other radio show for children. I twas our version of Saturday morning cartoons.
The same time we lived there, Uncle Johnnie’s daugter, Azadell, married Reece Hughey and had alittle boy and Mother’s half brother, Cecil came to live with us for a while. He was really mean to us, but later we found out why. After his father died, his mother was as aabusive to him and his little brother and sister as she had been to Mother. he had run away from home and was a very angry teenager.
I failed to mention earlier about the “stile crossing’ and where we lived and the park was located. If you crossed the stile and went up the Shed Road and around the Apartment units and park, there was a small road which led up to Curis park. At the very end of the road was McCullogh Tool Company. Daddy was paid the enormous sum of $2700.00 per year. I found later after,I grown up, a budget she had made up on a sheet of tablet paper that she had made. I’ll find time later to write what she did. The road also led to the Curtis Park Shopping Center. In that Center was a ”Drug Store” not just a Pharmacy, but a “Drug Store”. I don’t know to this day, why they were called that because they sold much the same items as they do today. When Daddy was out of town, sometimes, Mother would send Tommie and me to the Curtis Park “Drug Store” to buy a quart of ice cream, four comic books and a romance magazine for her. The magazine was “True Romance”. Sometimes it would be a movie magazine. The we’ld go home, pig out on ice cream and the four of us would look at comic books. We thought it was just wonderful. Life couldn’t be any better than a comic book and a cup of ice cream.
In the meantime, Mother was pregnant with Pat or Patricia Ann as we finally called her. That was pronounced Trishann, all one word. As I said Daddy drank really bad. One night he came home drinking and they had a row. She was at the sink washing dished in a dishpan, why a dishpan and not the sink, I don’t know. At any rate, she was washing the dishes in a pan. Daddy said something to aggrevate her and she dipped her hands in the pan and flicked water at him. he got really mad and picked up the pan of water and dumped it on her. She fell and I was very scared because I remembered the other little baby had died. I argued with him to leave her alone although I was only nine. He helped me get her up. I don’t remember whether she went to the doctor or not, but I do remember that he sat all night long with a rifle across his lap (Daddy did that is) so she coudn;t get up. So I took Johnnie to bed with me and Tommie and Wallace slep on the sofa bed. That’s where Johnnie slept from then on and the boys slept of the sofa bed.
Later before Pat was born, Mother was going into Bossier City and the city bus stopped at the top of Shed Road to pick her up. The bus stopped next to a railroad track. When she started to get on, the bus driver started moving. He drug her some little distance causing her considerable back pain, not to mention that fact that she was pregnant.
Anyway, Pat was born soon after that. When she was born, Johnnie was three years old. He crossed the stile, went up the rock path, out the gate and across Shed Road to an older neighbor’s apartment. He called her by name and told her that he had a new sister and asked her if she ould be interested in buying that baby. She smiled and told him sure. then she asked him how muche would take for her. He asked how much would she give him. The answer was fifty cents and the price was agreed upon. Johnnie took his fifty cents and started up Shed Road. Before he got there Daddy found him and asked where he was going. “To spend my fifty Cents”was his anwer. “What fifty cents?? was the next question. “The fifity cents I got for selling the baby” came back the next answer. EWll the trip stopped there and we didn’t lose Pat, but Johnnie kept the fifty cents.
Following Pat’s birth, the Bus Company owners called Mother and offered her $500.00 to keep her from suing them for the dragging accident. She had tro stay in bed for about ten days after Pat was born and she didn’t have any clothes that fit, so she took the $500.00, which I’m sure seemed a lot of money to her. She sent Uncle Rudolph and me to Shreveport to byher some clothes. Whe went to Graybors and bought a black shheer blouse with a ruffell around the nck line and a gray suity, with a opair of black pumps and a pair of hose with a seam down the back. We next bought her a hat that she called her “go to hell” kind of hat. It was a short Top hat with a black feather going up the side and she always wore it angeled over her right eye and over her right ear. She later had aher picture made in the suit and blouse with her currly hair hanging down on her shoulders, with a smouldring look on her face. If I failed to mention it before, our mother was a beautiful woman.
Not too long after that episode, Mother went into a depression. We sould probably call it Post Partum Drpression now, but she had to be hospitalized. Aunt Earline came through on the way to Mississippi to see her folks and Daddy sent pat and me with her. The boys went to either one of our Uncles or our cousin. The doctors put her to sleep for four days and when she woke up she was over the depression, I think. However, after that she had recurring episodes of depression every few years. Later the doctors said she had recurring clinical depression and then later chemical depression. I don’t know that I really agree that’s what she had because she was a little manic at times and I wondered if she could have been somewhat bipolar.
Sometime after Pat’s birth, we moved again and that’s a tale for another day.
