Getting into a pastoral idyllic West Virginia existence was a metamorphosis that found much support since I was giving up an unpopular wild idea that called for me getting an engineering degree and doing great things with it. Nobody but my dad had approved of that wild-ass idea, and the wider world was more than glad to congratulate me for going back to ordinary striving, which spelled getting married, getting pregnant, having babies, and settling down to do women’s work. Even my women’s body said You Go Girl!
Seven years later, it had all unraveled. Baby girl laid to rest, and persevering at Salem College in spite of tragedy, I was at the jumping-off place with my teacher’s college. Only one semester remaining, the only thing left to do was Student Teaching. I looked down that road, pictured my introverted self, standing in front of a classroom of flesh and blood students, and threw in the towel. It was more than cringe worthy; I couldn’t do it. It literally wasn’t in me. It was the first time since I ran off the stage trailing tears during my 1950 piano recital, that I faced something which for me was just not possible. Yet there I was, buried in the back of beyond, a beautiful place but not sustainable for a mother of three with no college degree. I loved my babies. How well I knew, having so recently lost one of them, and now I must fight to keep from losing them all.
I took Dale and Lane out to the Taylor farm, a familiar grandma and grandpa destination, but this time taking pillowcases filled with everything, not just the usual pajamas and toothbrush. Garnet promised to care for my boys until I could reclaim them, and I left. I had paid good cash for a new washer and dryer, and arranged to have them donated to an old spinster friend, Elizabeth Spiker, who had been there for me and the boys since I first left the hollow to return to school. It felt good to give back, a thank-you for all those free meals at her kitchen table. Everything else got passed on to the landlady with a quick letter. “Put it to good use,” I instructed, and the things I simply had to have went into the old Dodge. I left the key on the table and pulled out before dawn, springs squawking and engine backfiring.
That old Dodge and I somehow made it all the way to Texas. The only thing bad that happened along the way was losing the pulley that sits on the front end of the main crankshaft. In the natural order of things it runs a belt that turns the generator. That was a show-stopper. It had lost its screw, but I soon had it brute-force-welded onto the shaft were it ran for several years with only occasional replacement whenever the weld joint failed. I parked my car, my assorted claptrap, and my body at my dad’s place in Azle while I looked for a job, any job. Texas Instruments in Dallas was more than glad to hire me to assemble electronics, and I accepted.
That required me to find lodging in Richardson, where TI operates its Apparatus Division. Working felt good since there was money coming in, albeit only pennies per hour. My dad was glad to see me once again engaged with the real world, but made a strong case for leaving the boys for the Taylor’s to raise.
“How could I do such a thing?” I protested.
“Easy,” he replied. “Just do it.”
That was long before Nike coined the same quip as a slogan, and it entered the stream of history.
With a paying job and an apartment, I was ready to petition the West Virginia Court for resumption of custody of my two sons. More letters led to a hearing date when I was to fly to Harrisville, West Virginia, present evidence that supported my ability to care for and support Dale (8) and Lane (3) on my own and request out-of-state sole legal custody. It was asking a lot. I had fled the state in disarray, but at least had set up the paternal grandparents in loco parentis. Since I wasn’t tasking my dad to support us, he backed off and was at least pleasant about having two grand-sons to contend with, a problem often called to his attention by his then resident squeeze, Marcie. But that’s another story.
The several weeks of waiting were an eternity. It felt like I had crashed and burned. The TI job was a life saver, and with the help of a suicide help-line and my new TI Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance, I lived through some panic attacks and gastro-intestinal challenges to present myself as demanded by Judge Max DeBerry. Having already conceded the enormity of my situation in prior hearings, he found in my favor. We three took off for Texas on the next plane.
This began a head-of-household/single-mother-act of comedic proportions. I learned about after-school daycare that was worlds removed from mountain-mamma-by-the-hour. Just keeping a lease was a challenge. Ask Dale who woke up from a night terror to find himself peeing into a 120 volt receptacle. It was a real shock, and required some fast talk to keep the landlord from voiding my lease. I agreed to pay for a new outlet, and the fiasco was forgiven if not forgotten. With two kids to feed, I soon realized that my little paycheck wouldn’t be going very far. In fact, the first time my car license came up for renewal, I didn’t have the money to pay the fee, so assessing my position, I bought a new Dart. My old car was the down payment; my brand new TI Credit Union account offered a low interest loan; and the tax, title, and license were rolled into the deal. All I had to do was make the payments—which I managed quite nicely given raises and promotions. We made do.
As a child I had been moved from place to place, changing homes and schools at the drop of a caregiver’s hat. What was difficult then, made me fearless now, as I assessed present and future housing options. I wasn’t afraid of a move. I even liked it. No need to scrub the oven when a new apartment would present a pristine one. As I made more money it was fun to find a better place where the boys would be even happier, with a bigger pool, a fishing pond, or a clubhouse for after school happy days adventure. Every new job provided the necessary excuse to pry us from any onerous lease.
I enjoyed moving to better, more interesting places, which is what led to a memorable relocation to a cabin on Spring Creek. The place used to be remote but was suddenly on the edge of suburban development. It was a sub-let from a friend of a friend named Bill Birnam. I paid him $60 every month and enjoyed a snug wood-paneled cabin on a creek with Tarzan swing overlook. The boys could yell as they swung across the creek gorge and cannon-splashed into it. With such reasonable rent I had money for upgrades, matching towels, tablecloths and napkins, and even big plans for acquiring furniture. We were in fat city for several months until one day a dozer operator knocked on my door and said he was scheduled to demolish the structure. I was appalled, and refused to leave since I had paid that month’s rent in good faith. Of course the next day brought the eviction notice. As a member in good standing of Highland Park Methodist Church, I called Dr. Dickenson and asked him what to do. It turns out the owner of the property was also a member of HPMC, and Bill Birnam had no right whatsoever to create a sub-lease and collect rent based on his cancelled primary one. His name may have become famous in Dallas County years later, but then and there, he was just a two-bit wannabe operator. The developer, a God-fearing man, agreed to move us the very next day into a pre-paid lease at Springbrook Apartments— nicer, and even closer to TI. God is indeed great.
Wherever we moved, the boys settled in nicely, made themselves at home and explored with exuberance. Their favorite thing was to present me with treasure re-claimed from dumpsters at each new location. No matter how much I forbade such dangerous adventurism, it was hard to hide my pleasure when presented with something needed and useful. My favorite Revere-Ware skillet was the bounty of just such an exploration. I still have in my jewelry chest a fine gold chain, resplendent with two tiny gold ballet slippers and a pearl. I’m sure Dale knows that even though I admonished him never again to undertake such risk, I was deeply touched by his gift, retrieved from the bowels of beyond.
Not every escapade was dangerous; indeed most were wholesome, such as finding a well-stocked pond on the Springbrook grounds, secreted among shade trees, where Dale spent all his spare time bait fishing and tying flies. He was establishing a life-long penchant for wetting his hook and befriending peace. Lane made human friends with astonishing alacrity. Every time we moved, he learned to create more buddies to replace those left behind. I asked him one day, how he managed it so well. “Easy,” he replied. “I just start throwing rocks at the new guys. They get mad and start chucking back. Then, I go over to their side and suggest that we make friends instead. It always works.” No wonder Lane grew up to break every sales record he ever challenged. Even now, I believe he should credit our excessive perambulation for his ability to engender good will and create money.
There were five long years between Dale and Lane, a difference that no doubt contributed to their Three-Stooges brand of comedy. Lane was constantly baiting Dale, and Dale inevitably reciprocated to excess. I then waded in with more than enough remonstration. Our rowdy triumvirate outdid the Three Stooges at their own shtick. I look back with amusement and more than a little chagrin. I always wondered which of us played which stooge, but never was motivated to investigate. Lest the fault be placed on the boys, I should confess to hedging a blow by iron skillet aimed at Dales head, which was mercifully accurate in its deceleration and didn’t even raise a knot. It was the only appropriate response to his retort that washing dishes was women’s work. I’m happy to report that he never, ever again spoke of dish hygiene as the rightful purview of women.
One Christmas when money was more than usually short, we conjured our holiday by monitoring the diminishing inventory of a neighboring Christmas tree lot. As soon as the lights went off on Christmas Eve, and the Santa’s helpers drove away to make Christmas for other girls and boys, we pulled on our boots and went shopping. This was the time when cut trees went from insanely expensive, to gratis. On December 26th all those trees were to be carted away to become mulch, or even smog. We picked out the prettiest white-flocked princess on the lot, and dragged it away to our empty apartment where it did its best to make our holiday glow. I suppose it was a complicated lesson to model for two little boys, but I assured them that we saved that tree from a Joan-of-Arc martyrdom. It’s amazing how an action can vary from scurrilous larceny to blessed mitzvah as only a matter of timing.
Sometimes timing became the catalyst. During the early days when we only had money for food, rent, and electricity, we made-do for furniture with wooden milk cartons from behind the Kroger store in the next block. We slept on the floor, folded our clothing neatly and stacked it in the crates. Bedding served as bed-location-holders and defined the spots where beds would someday be. In the autumn of the year, I had long enjoyed picking dried weeds and flowers, saving and arranging them into fantastic bouquets and whimsical dioramas, where flower carcasses stood in for trees, and mirrors became frozen skating ponds, while canned snow sprayed the whole scene with the snowfall of a quiet night under a starry sky. With a whiff of imagination, amazing things can be accomplished, but with a stroke of bad luck doing eccentric things can be interpreted as scandalous. A case in point is the time when we spent the week-end gathering weeds and grouping them throughout our rooms, where they could be utilized in one or another of that fall’s nature projects. On Monday it was off-to-work and school, looking forward to a list of artistic endeavors yet to be accomplished.
That was the day when the Richardson Fire Department showed up and picked my apartment number from a lottery, that called for it as well as several others, to be inspected—something to do with insurance, fire codes, and safety. I got the call on the job: “Come home immediately and vacate the premises—forthwith.” Of course they were alarmed at what they found in Apartment 4C. Where others had tables, beds, lamps and chests of drawers, we had milk cartons and boards balanced as shelves separated with stacked bricks. The whole apartment was strewn with dry weeds just waiting for a match. The fireman didn’t even want to know what we were up to; the property manager just wanted us out.
I didn’t argue. It must have looked terrible to anyone who had no vision of the holiday to come and how we planned to make it beautiful in spite of a stretch of penury. I apologized and moved out. We did our best that year, and it’s memorable that it was the expose of our odd-ball disarray that made for a lovely remembrance, while the hurtful repercussions following it are lost to time. As years passed and we traded found items for real furniture, life began to take on a more traditional appearance; but never would I be considered normal. I was always too willing to entertain unusual permutations and combinations when assessing possibilities.
As the boys got older, their situations became more complex. It was at Sherman’s TI that I got a call to go home and let Lane into the house since Dale had locked him out—naked. He had to make his way nude to the next door neighbor’s back door, coincidentally the NTSU Dean of Students, and use the phone. My exasperation level was indescribable. How was I to represent myself as a professional employee at a serious institution, with such goings-on defining my life? Too angry to even remonstrate, I sank into gloom. Things must have improved since we all lived to make another day. I felt better when I learned that the Dean spent much of his quality time on the commode, reading his paper and conversing with his family through the open bathroom door. I couldn’t match that, nor did I want to. We all have to have something to feel superior about.
It took a lot to get me and my progeny from barefoot-and-pregnant-mountain-momma to serious contender in the military-industrial-aerospace-complex. The way was far from straight. I walked it, step by step, but I didn’t do it alone. I had kids to keep me grounded in the things that matter most, and co-workers that kept me from falling in love with my own inventions and becoming insufferable. Where would I be without the folks who kept me real—and together— and connected? I would be even harder to put up with. I can’t claim to have ever arrived; no matter the level of ascent, there would always have been one more hill to climb and one more river to cross, but the time spent on the road was well served, and the life well lived. It’s always these little family skirmishes that most enrich my memories, not the see-me-run-Daddy moments that always fell short, usually flat on my face.
