| Biographical Non-Fiction posted October 24, 2014 |
  |
Round-up of childhood memories.
More Childhood Memories
by patcelaw
This chapter had for me some thorns and some roses.
I was the seventh born of ten children, the first born of a set of twins. I was born on June 7, 1938. Since my twin brother was born with a breathing problem, my mother gave the care of me over to my oldest sister Juanita. Because of this I never really bonded with my mother.
Mother also told me often that she gasped for breath because I looked so much like my maternal grandmother.
We lived in an old 2 story farmhouse on an eighty acre farm.
Going to a small one room school for first through eight grades, made for interesting friends and enemies. As a third grader, myself and Connie, a fellow third grader were always at each others throats with our quarreling.
After about the tenth time of arguing one day our teacher, Mrs. Williams had all she could stand. She dismissed herself and proceeded to the basement of the school. When she reappeared she had the one lone pair of boxing gloves that the school had. Then she called Connie and me to follow her to the front porch of the school and had the other 10 students in the school follow as well.
Then she looked at Connie and said, "Connie, put out your right hand." As Connie put out her right hand, she then placed to right hand boxing glove on Connie's hand, because Connie was right handed and instructed her to wait.
Mrs. Williams then came to me and saying to me, "Patricia, put out my left hand." I suppose that was because I was left handed. She placed the left hand boxing glove on my hand.
Then she said, "If you girls are going to fight, you are going to do it the right way. Now hit each other as I watch."
Connie and I both hesitated, not knowing that we really wanted to fight, but Mrs. Williams insisted that we were going to fight the right way.
Finally after a few minutes Connie grew brave enough to throw a punch at me. The glove had barely grazed my chin. With this, I became angry and pulled my glove back and threw a punch at Connie, hitting her in the nose. It made Connie's nose bleed and I really felt bad about what I had done.
That ended the fight and Connie and I went on to become the best of friends for our next five years before my family moved to another town and I never saw Connie again.
Years later my daughter and a foster girl who were exactly the same age, (six years old) were verbally fighting and I used the same method I had learned as a third grader on them to stop their fighting, and they too became the best of friends after that day.
We had a neighbor who lived about 1 mile from our home and he was always so nice to us as children. His name if I recall right was Ed Meins. Ed worked at the dairy processing plant in Sedalia, Missouri which was thirteen miles from our home
I remember one hot summer day, the dairy Ed Meins worked for had a mismatch on the ice cream, it was good, but not legal to sell because the fat content was not right. He brought our family five gallons of the ice cream. We didn’t have much room in the small freezer compartment in our fridge, so us kids ate ice cream until we almost became sick of ice cream. For me it was a long time before I could eat ice cream.
Many times as a child I would be out playing, doing mostly tomboy things as my older sister was seven years older and my younger sis was seven years younger. So my playmates were my older brother, Luther three years older, my twin and my younger brother Jerry three years younger.
Many times when I would do tomboy things I would get hurt, mainly spraining very weak ankles.
My mom would wrap the ankles with bandages, and as she wrapped, she would say, "If you were not such a tomboy you wouldn't keep getting hurt."
Mother was rough with me in other ways as well, when she would fix my hair, if I didn't sit perfectly still she would yank my hair and I hated having her do my hair.
Many times the other kids would tease me and call me names like, trash and bean pole. When I would complain to mom about the teasing, she would say, "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." But words did hurt.
As kids we were treated like slaves to do the work on the farm, it seemed. Hoeing, weeding, planting and gathering the crops.
In the summer as mother would can food, because I had little hands, I was made to wash the jars to be used. I wanted to please my mom so badly and I never complained or talked back to her like my brothers did. I knew it was wrong to sass my parents and kept anger bottled up inside of me.
Life at home was anything but peaceful as mom and dad were always fighting and the tension was terrible.
Shortly there after my mother had to have surgery on her feet for bone spurs on her heels and she also had to have a hysterectomy as she almost bled to death because of tumors in her uterus. She was in the hospital close to 4 months.
During that time my older sis, Mary ran away and married. This left me as the oldest of the girl child at home, so I was thrown into the role of mother at 11 years of age. I had to learn to cook, do laundry on a wringer style washer and had to hang the clothes on a line outside. It seemed to me my world was falling apart.
After my mom got well, she took a job in another town about 100 miles from our home, and still the job of mother fell on me.
It was at this time that I have the one and only good memory of my father. I was fixing a beef stew for dinner. Dad came into the house saw what I was doing and said, "the stew smells so good, but did you put in the magic ingredient?"
I said, "what is the magic ingredient?"
He then left the kitchen and in a few minutes came back with 4 big apples. He washed them, quartered them and cored them and dropped them into the stew. At dinner my brothers raved about how good the stew was. My dad said, "that is because Patricia used the magic ingredient" as he looked at me and winked. Neither he nor I told the brothers what the magic ingredient was.
A few months later dad sold the farm and moved closer to where my mother was working. We moved into a huge house in Calwood. Missouri.
It was here where the pressures on me began to take a toll, as I began to act out and starting doing behaviors which I felt entitled to do. I felt like I was taking on the job of an adult so why not have the pleasures of an adult.
Looking back now, I see that was not very good thinking on my part.
Try as I might, I was caught in a web of deceit and terror. I began to smoke at 14. And began to act out doing things which I knew were wrong.
My mom would say to me in these times, "what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive." But never told me what this meant.
I was to learn many years later that my mother knew of my behavior, but not once did she sit me down and talk with me about the behavior or hold me accountable.
On the farm where we lived when I was 14 years old. One day a neighbor girl, Judy came to our house. She and I wandered down to the pond. Judy wanted to go wading in the pond, but I could not swim so I was afraid to go in the water with her. She had waded out about 4 feet and her feet got stuck to the muddy bottom of the pond. I could see she was in distress and I was afraid she was going to drown.
Putting my fear of the water aside and knowing I was taller than her, I went into the water and pulled her out of the mud and brought her to the shore.
In hindsight we both could have drowned that day if Judy had fought me.
My father was an angry man, and he often took it out on his children. The last straw for my mother, who had been married to my dad for 35 years, happened when my youngest brother came home 30 minutes late from where he had gone to study with another student in his school.
The children didn't have enough books for each student to take home so the children would go to other homes to study. When my brother arrived home my dad threw him down in a chair and beat him with a shoe around his head and back. The next morning, Jerry's face and back were bruised so badly he would not go to school.
Instead of going to school he went to the little grocery store in our town. The owner took one look at Jerry and asked, "what happened to you?"
Jerry replied, "my dad had beat me with a shoe." Then a man came into the store. The owner of the store asked the man to take Jerry to a judge in Fulton, Missouri.
The judge found out what had happened and called my mother at work and told her, if she did not press charges for child abuse against my dad, he the judge, would have dad arrested himself.
My mother and father divorced when I was a sophomore in high school and we moved to Fulton, Missouri where I was in school and my mother worked.
I had been a good student in school my first eight years, but with all the turmoil in our home and my mother loading more and more on my shoulders my grades slipped to the point where I was barely passing. I lived in dread and was so tired most of the time, I was not able to study or did I care much to study.
I just knew I was a very bad girl and bad girls would never amount to much. Mother would say to me, "Patricia, you know you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear."
Even though I thought it, my mind said, "maybe not, but if there is a God, He can make a silk purse out of any thing He wants."
During the summer between my junior and senior year of high school I worked in the community hospital as a nurses aide. I earned enough that summer to buy my school clothes and pay for my school books.
Finally in May of 1956, I graduated from high school. After graduation I got a job at the state mental hospital. I worked there for 6 months.
My brother Marion asked me to help his wife move to Beeville, Texas.
Marion's wife was still in Missouri, but Marion was already in Beeville.
I lived with them for about 6 weeks and returned home.
The next chapter is a fun story based on a real happening in my life. I wanted to take a break for a little fun, since there is some heavy stuff coming in later chapters.
This chapter had for me some thorns and some roses.
I was the seventh born of ten children, the first born of a set of twins. I was born on June 7, 1938. Since my twin brother was born with a breathing problem, my mother gave the care of me over to my oldest sister Juanita. Because of this I never really bonded with my mother.
Mother also told me often that she gasped for breath because I looked so much like my maternal grandmother.
We lived in an old 2 story farmhouse on an eighty acre farm.
Going to a small one room school for first through eight grades, made for interesting friends and enemies. As a third grader, myself and Connie, a fellow third grader were always at each others throats with our quarreling.
After about the tenth time of arguing one day our teacher, Mrs. Williams had all she could stand. She dismissed herself and proceeded to the basement of the school. When she reappeared she had the one lone pair of boxing gloves that the school had. Then she called Connie and me to follow her to the front porch of the school and had the other 10 students in the school follow as well.
Then she looked at Connie and said, "Connie, put out your right hand." As Connie put out her right hand, she then placed to right hand boxing glove on Connie's hand, because Connie was right handed and instructed her to wait.
Mrs. Williams then came to me and saying to me, "Patricia, put out my left hand." I suppose that was because I was left handed. She placed the left hand boxing glove on my hand.
Then she said, "If you girls are going to fight, you are going to do it the right way. Now hit each other as I watch."
Connie and I both hesitated, not knowing that we really wanted to fight, but Mrs. Williams insisted that we were going to fight the right way.
Finally after a few minutes Connie grew brave enough to throw a punch at me. The glove had barely grazed my chin. With this, I became angry and pulled my glove back and threw a punch at Connie, hitting her in the nose. It made Connie's nose bleed and I really felt bad about what I had done.
That ended the fight and Connie and I went on to become the best of friends for our next five years before my family moved to another town and I never saw Connie again.
Years later my daughter and a foster girl who were exactly the same age, (six years old) were verbally fighting and I used the same method I had learned as a third grader on them to stop their fighting, and they too became the best of friends after that day.
We had a neighbor who lived about 1 mile from our home and he was always so nice to us as children. His name if I recall right was Ed Meins. Ed worked at the dairy processing plant in Sedalia, Missouri which was thirteen miles from our home
I remember one hot summer day, the dairy Ed Meins worked for had a mismatch on the ice cream, it was good, but not legal to sell because the fat content was not right. He brought our family five gallons of the ice cream. We didn’t have much room in the small freezer compartment in our fridge, so us kids ate ice cream until we almost became sick of ice cream. For me it was a long time before I could eat ice cream.
Many times as a child I would be out playing, doing mostly tomboy things as my older sister was seven years older and my younger sis was seven years younger. So my playmates were my older brother, Luther three years older, my twin and my younger brother Jerry three years younger.
Many times when I would do tomboy things I would get hurt, mainly spraining very weak ankles.
My mom would wrap the ankles with bandages, and as she wrapped, she would say, "If you were not such a tomboy you wouldn't keep getting hurt."
Mother was rough with me in other ways as well, when she would fix my hair, if I didn't sit perfectly still she would yank my hair and I hated having her do my hair.
Many times the other kids would tease me and call me names like, trash and bean pole. When I would complain to mom about the teasing, she would say, "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." But words did hurt.
As kids we were treated like slaves to do the work on the farm, it seemed. Hoeing, weeding, planting and gathering the crops.
In the summer as mother would can food, because I had little hands, I was made to wash the jars to be used. I wanted to please my mom so badly and I never complained or talked back to her like my brothers did. I knew it was wrong to sass my parents and kept anger bottled up inside of me.
Life at home was anything but peaceful as mom and dad were always fighting and the tension was terrible.
Shortly there after my mother had to have surgery on her feet for bone spurs on her heels and she also had to have a hysterectomy as she almost bled to death because of tumors in her uterus. She was in the hospital close to 4 months.
During that time my older sis, Mary ran away and married. This left me as the oldest of the girl child at home, so I was thrown into the role of mother at 11 years of age. I had to learn to cook, do laundry on a wringer style washer and had to hang the clothes on a line outside. It seemed to me my world was falling apart.
After my mom got well, she took a job in another town about 100 miles from our home, and still the job of mother fell on me.
It was at this time that I have the one and only good memory of my father. I was fixing a beef stew for dinner. Dad came into the house saw what I was doing and said, "the stew smells so good, but did you put in the magic ingredient?"
I said, "what is the magic ingredient?"
He then left the kitchen and in a few minutes came back with 4 big apples. He washed them, quartered them and cored them and dropped them into the stew. At dinner my brothers raved about how good the stew was. My dad said, "that is because Patricia used the magic ingredient" as he looked at me and winked. Neither he nor I told the brothers what the magic ingredient was.
A few months later dad sold the farm and moved closer to where my mother was working. We moved into a huge house in Calwood. Missouri.
It was here where the pressures on me began to take a toll, as I began to act out and starting doing behaviors which I felt entitled to do. I felt like I was taking on the job of an adult so why not have the pleasures of an adult.
Looking back now, I see that was not very good thinking on my part.
Try as I might, I was caught in a web of deceit and terror. I began to smoke at 14. And began to act out doing things which I knew were wrong.
My mom would say to me in these times, "what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive." But never told me what this meant.
I was to learn many years later that my mother knew of my behavior, but not once did she sit me down and talk with me about the behavior or hold me accountable.
On the farm where we lived when I was 14 years old. One day a neighbor girl, Judy came to our house. She and I wandered down to the pond. Judy wanted to go wading in the pond, but I could not swim so I was afraid to go in the water with her. She had waded out about 4 feet and her feet got stuck to the muddy bottom of the pond. I could see she was in distress and I was afraid she was going to drown.
Putting my fear of the water aside and knowing I was taller than her, I went into the water and pulled her out of the mud and brought her to the shore.
In hindsight we both could have drowned that day if Judy had fought me.
My father was an angry man, and he often took it out on his children. The last straw for my mother, who had been married to my dad for 35 years, happened when my youngest brother came home 30 minutes late from where he had gone to study with another student in his school.
The children didn't have enough books for each student to take home so the children would go to other homes to study. When my brother arrived home my dad threw him down in a chair and beat him with a shoe around his head and back. The next morning, Jerry's face and back were bruised so badly he would not go to school.
Instead of going to school he went to the little grocery store in our town. The owner took one look at Jerry and asked, "what happened to you?"
Jerry replied, "my dad had beat me with a shoe." Then a man came into the store. The owner of the store asked the man to take Jerry to a judge in Fulton, Missouri.
The judge found out what had happened and called my mother at work and told her, if she did not press charges for child abuse against my dad, he the judge, would have dad arrested himself.
My mother and father divorced when I was a sophomore in high school and we moved to Fulton, Missouri where I was in school and my mother worked.
I had been a good student in school my first eight years, but with all the turmoil in our home and my mother loading more and more on my shoulders my grades slipped to the point where I was barely passing. I lived in dread and was so tired most of the time, I was not able to study or did I care much to study.
I just knew I was a very bad girl and bad girls would never amount to much. Mother would say to me, "Patricia, you know you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear."
Even though I thought it, my mind said, "maybe not, but if there is a God, He can make a silk purse out of any thing He wants."
During the summer between my junior and senior year of high school I worked in the community hospital as a nurses aide. I earned enough that summer to buy my school clothes and pay for my school books.
Finally in May of 1956, I graduated from high school. After graduation I got a job at the state mental hospital. I worked there for 6 months.
My brother Marion asked me to help his wife move to Beeville, Texas.
Marion's wife was still in Missouri, but Marion was already in Beeville.
I lived with them for about 6 weeks and returned home.
The next chapter is a fun story based on a real happening in my life. I wanted to take a break for a little fun, since there is some heavy stuff coming in later chapters.
I was the seventh born of ten children, the first born of a set of twins. I was born on June 7, 1938. Since my twin brother was born with a breathing problem, my mother gave the care of me over to my oldest sister Juanita. Because of this I never really bonded with my mother.
Mother also told me often that she gasped for breath because I looked so much like my maternal grandmother.
We lived in an old 2 story farmhouse on an eighty acre farm.
Going to a small one room school for first through eight grades, made for interesting friends and enemies. As a third grader, myself and Connie, a fellow third grader were always at each others throats with our quarreling.
After about the tenth time of arguing one day our teacher, Mrs. Williams had all she could stand. She dismissed herself and proceeded to the basement of the school. When she reappeared she had the one lone pair of boxing gloves that the school had. Then she called Connie and me to follow her to the front porch of the school and had the other 10 students in the school follow as well.
Then she looked at Connie and said, "Connie, put out your right hand." As Connie put out her right hand, she then placed to right hand boxing glove on Connie's hand, because Connie was right handed and instructed her to wait.
Mrs. Williams then came to me and saying to me, "Patricia, put out my left hand." I suppose that was because I was left handed. She placed the left hand boxing glove on my hand.
Then she said, "If you girls are going to fight, you are going to do it the right way. Now hit each other as I watch."
Connie and I both hesitated, not knowing that we really wanted to fight, but Mrs. Williams insisted that we were going to fight the right way.
Finally after a few minutes Connie grew brave enough to throw a punch at me. The glove had barely grazed my chin. With this, I became angry and pulled my glove back and threw a punch at Connie, hitting her in the nose. It made Connie's nose bleed and I really felt bad about what I had done.
That ended the fight and Connie and I went on to become the best of friends for our next five years before my family moved to another town and I never saw Connie again.
Years later my daughter and a foster girl who were exactly the same age, (six years old) were verbally fighting and I used the same method I had learned as a third grader on them to stop their fighting, and they too became the best of friends after that day.
We had a neighbor who lived about 1 mile from our home and he was always so nice to us as children. His name if I recall right was Ed Meins. Ed worked at the dairy processing plant in Sedalia, Missouri which was thirteen miles from our home
I remember one hot summer day, the dairy Ed Meins worked for had a mismatch on the ice cream, it was good, but not legal to sell because the fat content was not right. He brought our family five gallons of the ice cream. We didn’t have much room in the small freezer compartment in our fridge, so us kids ate ice cream until we almost became sick of ice cream. For me it was a long time before I could eat ice cream.
Many times as a child I would be out playing, doing mostly tomboy things as my older sister was seven years older and my younger sis was seven years younger. So my playmates were my older brother, Luther three years older, my twin and my younger brother Jerry three years younger.
Many times when I would do tomboy things I would get hurt, mainly spraining very weak ankles.
My mom would wrap the ankles with bandages, and as she wrapped, she would say, "If you were not such a tomboy you wouldn't keep getting hurt."
Mother was rough with me in other ways as well, when she would fix my hair, if I didn't sit perfectly still she would yank my hair and I hated having her do my hair.
Many times the other kids would tease me and call me names like, trash and bean pole. When I would complain to mom about the teasing, she would say, "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you." But words did hurt.
As kids we were treated like slaves to do the work on the farm, it seemed. Hoeing, weeding, planting and gathering the crops.
In the summer as mother would can food, because I had little hands, I was made to wash the jars to be used. I wanted to please my mom so badly and I never complained or talked back to her like my brothers did. I knew it was wrong to sass my parents and kept anger bottled up inside of me.
Life at home was anything but peaceful as mom and dad were always fighting and the tension was terrible.
Shortly there after my mother had to have surgery on her feet for bone spurs on her heels and she also had to have a hysterectomy as she almost bled to death because of tumors in her uterus. She was in the hospital close to 4 months.
During that time my older sis, Mary ran away and married. This left me as the oldest of the girl child at home, so I was thrown into the role of mother at 11 years of age. I had to learn to cook, do laundry on a wringer style washer and had to hang the clothes on a line outside. It seemed to me my world was falling apart.
After my mom got well, she took a job in another town about 100 miles from our home, and still the job of mother fell on me.
It was at this time that I have the one and only good memory of my father. I was fixing a beef stew for dinner. Dad came into the house saw what I was doing and said, "the stew smells so good, but did you put in the magic ingredient?"
I said, "what is the magic ingredient?"
He then left the kitchen and in a few minutes came back with 4 big apples. He washed them, quartered them and cored them and dropped them into the stew. At dinner my brothers raved about how good the stew was. My dad said, "that is because Patricia used the magic ingredient" as he looked at me and winked. Neither he nor I told the brothers what the magic ingredient was.
A few months later dad sold the farm and moved closer to where my mother was working. We moved into a huge house in Calwood. Missouri.
It was here where the pressures on me began to take a toll, as I began to act out and starting doing behaviors which I felt entitled to do. I felt like I was taking on the job of an adult so why not have the pleasures of an adult.
Looking back now, I see that was not very good thinking on my part.
Try as I might, I was caught in a web of deceit and terror. I began to smoke at 14. And began to act out doing things which I knew were wrong.
My mom would say to me in these times, "what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive." But never told me what this meant.
I was to learn many years later that my mother knew of my behavior, but not once did she sit me down and talk with me about the behavior or hold me accountable.
On the farm where we lived when I was 14 years old. One day a neighbor girl, Judy came to our house. She and I wandered down to the pond. Judy wanted to go wading in the pond, but I could not swim so I was afraid to go in the water with her. She had waded out about 4 feet and her feet got stuck to the muddy bottom of the pond. I could see she was in distress and I was afraid she was going to drown.
Putting my fear of the water aside and knowing I was taller than her, I went into the water and pulled her out of the mud and brought her to the shore.
In hindsight we both could have drowned that day if Judy had fought me.
My father was an angry man, and he often took it out on his children. The last straw for my mother, who had been married to my dad for 35 years, happened when my youngest brother came home 30 minutes late from where he had gone to study with another student in his school.
The children didn't have enough books for each student to take home so the children would go to other homes to study. When my brother arrived home my dad threw him down in a chair and beat him with a shoe around his head and back. The next morning, Jerry's face and back were bruised so badly he would not go to school.
Instead of going to school he went to the little grocery store in our town. The owner took one look at Jerry and asked, "what happened to you?"
Jerry replied, "my dad had beat me with a shoe." Then a man came into the store. The owner of the store asked the man to take Jerry to a judge in Fulton, Missouri.
The judge found out what had happened and called my mother at work and told her, if she did not press charges for child abuse against my dad, he the judge, would have dad arrested himself.
My mother and father divorced when I was a sophomore in high school and we moved to Fulton, Missouri where I was in school and my mother worked.
I had been a good student in school my first eight years, but with all the turmoil in our home and my mother loading more and more on my shoulders my grades slipped to the point where I was barely passing. I lived in dread and was so tired most of the time, I was not able to study or did I care much to study.
I just knew I was a very bad girl and bad girls would never amount to much. Mother would say to me, "Patricia, you know you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear."
Even though I thought it, my mind said, "maybe not, but if there is a God, He can make a silk purse out of any thing He wants."
During the summer between my junior and senior year of high school I worked in the community hospital as a nurses aide. I earned enough that summer to buy my school clothes and pay for my school books.
Finally in May of 1956, I graduated from high school. After graduation I got a job at the state mental hospital. I worked there for 6 months.
My brother Marion asked me to help his wife move to Beeville, Texas.
Marion's wife was still in Missouri, but Marion was already in Beeville.
I lived with them for about 6 weeks and returned home.
The next chapter is a fun story based on a real happening in my life. I wanted to take a break for a little fun, since there is some heavy stuff coming in later chapters.
The next chapter is a fiction piece but based on a real happening. The title is Outsmarted. After that chapter, I will get back on track. I wanted to take a break for a little fun, since there is some heavy stuff ahead.
Photo of me when I was 10 years old.
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and 2 member cents. Photo of me when I was 10 years old.
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