Full Circle

Introduction

The story was started as an effort to record some family history for my children and grandchildren, focusing on growing up in poverty, abuse and neglect, and ignorance, and my determination to rise above that background. I was the only one left on this side of the family to record this part of their family history or heritage of what it was like growing up during the Great Depression and World War II in America. There was no one else who knew who the various photos and saved letters represented. There was a story to tell here, and as it unfolded and turned circles upon itself, a deeper message evolved. In retrospect and reflection, I caught the message for myself. It is my hope that as others read through this they may catch a glimpse within their own lives and become aware of that all caring, all loving presence that directs our paths. May this be inspiration and encouragement for those who may have to work a little harder to climb a little higher.

Full Circle

*****the early years

I was born at 1121 E. Market St. at 5:30 a.m. on April 24, 1930, in the small East Texas town of Palestine. I weighed two and a half pounds, or so I was told, but that was being weighed on a chicken scale, so I can't be too sure of the weight, and really do suspect it was more than that for me to have survived the circumstances. The doctor did tell my parents that I was not likely to survive the first week. However, nestled at my Indian mother's breast I received the nourishment necessary to continue. My father told me that I fit onto the palm of his hand. "What hath God wrought?" must have passed through their minds.

Being born at home, there was no accurate record of the birth. This was discovered when at age eighteen, I wrote the county of birth requesting a birth certificate and discovered there was none.

Fortunately, I remembered the name of the doctor who had attended the birth and the small hospital where he practiced. He answered my letter telling me that he had no record as I described it, but there was a birth a week earlier, with the first name being different, but the last being what was ascribed to my family. His letter asked if this could be correct, and if it would do? I wrote back telling him the name I had always used, and the birth date that had always been counted, if not celebrated, and asked if he could accommodate this information. He did. Within a week or so I had a bona fide birth certificate.

I was the second child of my father's third wife who was forty-two at the time of my birth, with my father being fifty-five. My brother had been born five years earlier. I had two half sisters, and a half brother born of my father's first wife, and old enough to have been my parents. My father's first wife had died in childbirth, and on those days set aside to go to the graveyard to clean off the family plot, I had viewed that grave with the tiny one at the foot. Another was close by of a girl child, age sixteen who had died. When I was old enough to put meaning to these facts and figures, it was easy enough to determine that I had not been in my parents' planning that year in the midst of the Deep Depression.

The depression hit my father hard, and he lost all that he had in the banks, and though he lived to be seventy five, he never regained a trust of the banking system. What he had was hidden about the house, and this became popularly known. The home was visited more than once by someone hoping to find something worth risking the nose of the double barreled shot gun that hung over the door close to my father's bed. I remember being awakened in the middle of the night hearing footsteps, doors slamming, and the shot gun sounding off. My father was faster than the intended robber, and I never knew of one succeeding, or actually getting shot either.

I was born in what was known to the family as the "new house"; the "old house" being the one that stood along side it, that stood until long after I had left the premises. The old house had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a screen-in porch. I used it as a play house, for it was still fully furnished. It had just been vacated and its occupants moved into the new house.

I remember as a young child standing on a child's chair and brushing my mother's long black hair. I don't remember how she looked. There was the story that was told to me over and over of my mother and her brother being taken in by a "little old lady" because they had gotten lost from their parents. My mother had gone to school and learned to read and to write at the lower level of elementary school. My father completed the second grade.

I didn't actually know what my name was until I entered school. I learned that the "I.V." that I had been called stood for "Ida Verlon". My brother was "J. D." My initials continued to prevail among my classmates, and of course the "I.V". became "ivy" which became "poison ivy".

My father had a "short fuse" as my brother described his quick and volatile temper. His punishment was one to be avoided. It consisted of a beating with a razor strap, which hung in the kitchen near the table where he shaved with a straight edged razor. It had hung there a long time, long enough to have dried out many times, and to have curled along the side edges. When struck by it, these curled edges left their stripes. I soon learned not to evoke my father's anger.