Chapter 2 ... Shattered Dreams

I'm sorry it took so long to start chapter 2.... when you go that deep into memory it takes a little time to absorb the shock of what you have suppressed for many years. I am thankful that I have someone that I can talk to about the emotional side of getting real.

Paragould Arkansas 1964, a culture shock to say the least. We move into a rent house two doors down from the White Way Inn, a local tavern on Hwy 49, while our new house was being built. Their where six women living in a two bedroom, one bath house! My mother, us four girls and my cousin Joan. Joan was 16 at the time and decided she wanted to live with us so she could help mom. I was her favorite, she let me stay up late, sleep in the living room with her, and would take me riding around with her friends. In exchange for not telling on her! Pretty fair trade off I thought.

I was still pretty rebellious and more angry, after we moved. Every time I didn't like what was going on or things didn't go my way I would scream " That's it, I'm running away!" I would go to my room, pack my run away bag... 1 pair of panties, 5 socks, my favorite stuffed animal ( pig) and my bank that had $ .79c and to the front door I would go, announcing that "I was not coming back! I'm going back to my Grandma Lil's and you can't stop me!"

One night mother didn't stop me. She told me that if that was the only thing that would make me happy, to go on. I walked out of the front door and walked up the hill to the White Way Inn and sat at the bar. The bartender ask was I lost? I told him no I was running away from home, he ask where I lived and I told him two doors down. He sent someone to my house to tell my mother where I was so she wouldn't worry. I'm sure as many times as my mother went into the taverns to get my dad, she never thought she would be doing the same with her 7 yr old daughter! She busted my butt all the way to the house. It was the last time I ran away from home.

I was a very mixed up, sad, child with a secret. I didn't feel like I fit in real well at school. All the kids seem to be so happy, and I felt so sad. I didn't have any friends until the school year was almost over. That summer we moved into our new neighborhood. I was a beautiful 4 bedroom bath and half, den with fireplace, formal living room, and a big yard. I thought we were rich.

My playmates were ALL BOYS! We were the only girls on the whole block and they hated us!!! Jimmy Lou Fisher was our next door neighbor, She was my mom's best friend, then there were John and Bobby Martin, Mike Malone, J.D. Stephenson, Danny and Steve Sparler, and David Smith. The first week we were there, they tied my feet and hands behind my back and left me a block from my house, I had to belly crawl home, shot all the windows out of our new home with a b b gun, and threw rotten apples at me every time I walked to the mail box. I was in the 4Th grade before they excepted the fact we were here to stay.

I some how managed to get past 3rd grade the second time around, and made it through elementary with very few friends. I wet the bed until I was 9 years old and continued to have nightmares until I was 10.

I started middle school and played in the band, I played trumpet. I started making new friends, that's when I learned that if I make people laugh they will like me, so I became the class clown.
Girls started inviting me over to there house to spend the night and eating lunch with me. I would do almost anything to get a laugh. As long as I could make people laugh I didn't think about how sad I was.

We grew up in East Side Baptist church, it where my mothers entire family attended every time the doors where open, I got involved with Girls Auxiliary, sang with a youth group.It was 1970.We called our group the Messenger's. We sang at all the youth rallies,and traveled to different churches in northeast Ark and around. I felt like I was finally starting to fell normal. Our group consisted of Diane Magg, Jackie Hunter, Dianna Wheeler, Rick Fry, Charles Cook, and Johnny Gibson, and me. I sang alto. It was the best time of my life. We were together for 3 years .

It was the summer of 1972, my sister Christi started dating a guy a couple of years older than her, Danny Wood. He was a bright, nice looking, country boy from Tech. He didn't swear, smoke, or drink and loved to race cars. He was head over heels in love with Christi. He joined the Army right out of High school and would come home every weekend to visit Chris. Danny was 3 weeks from getting out of the Army on a hardship so he could marry Christi and move home. His weekends where spent getting letters and statements from people he knew to help him get out of the Army, he got so desperate he shot himself in the foot while on leave so he could get out on a disability.

One weekend the fair was in town and he came in to take us, he brought a friend who was in the army with him for me to meet. We doubled that weekend. We came home with large stuffed animals, and trophy's they had won for us. That night at the fair on the top of the ferris wheel, Danny ask Christi to marry him and gave her a ring. You could hear her voice echo over the city as she said YES! That night Danny and his friend left late going back to the base in Ft. Lenard wood, Kentucky. Chris and Danny had words about him leaving so late. Christy and I laid in bed talking about what a great weekend we had and made plans for the wedding that would take place when he returned home for the last time in 3 weeks. She was so excited and I was excited for her. We feel asleep listening to their song on the radio, " Wild fire".

That morning at around 5 am the phone rang, it was Danny's friend. Danny was in a hospital in Jackson Tennessee fighting for his life, he was driving in access of 100 mph and feel asleep behind the wheel. He hit a concrete culvert and flipped his car 5 times, he was thrown from the car and it landed on top of him. Mother, Christi and I drove all morning to arrive at the hospital at noon that day. He was in ICU, his brain was swelling and they didn't expect him to make it through the night. Christi could not go in to the room to see him, so they hooked up a telephone and held it to his ear. When he heard Christy's voice his monitors would respond with activity. Danny died that morning of sever head trauma. I will never forget the screams that rang through the halls of that hospital. Christi was never the same after Danny died. She became very depressed and suicidal. It would take our entire family to help her through this very difficult time. I think it would change her life forever and mine too.


Moral of this Blog: Only the good die young...

Chapter 1 ... Meet Me In St. Louis

It 's one thing to tell you're innermost secrets, it's quite another to get real. I gave a general description of my past, I can run through the titles but unless you hear the stories that are behind the past, you still don't know me. It's still just surface. I want people to know who I am, the struggles I've been through, the lessons I've learned, the journey I have known, good and bad. That's what make people , people. I'm just people. My stories may not be anything that you have had to endure in your life so far but you may know someone who is going through something similar. Perhaps it will help you. help them. So over the course of the next few weeks I am going to be very real, candid, and naked. I'm going to take my clothes one peice at a time. I'm going to tell my story...no secrets, no lies. Just real.

St. Louis Missiouri 1956, this is where I was born. My mother and father met when my mother moved to St. Louis to live with my aunt Mackie and work. My father lived across the street and my mom thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. And he was. They fell in love and married in 1956.
I was the first daughter of four. A year and half later my sister Christy was born, 2 years later Kim, our special sister. She was born down syndrome, 2 years later Angie.

I didn't like Christy to much growing up, she was always a drama queen, cried to get her way, prissy, center of attention, and a tattle-tale. I was very mean to Christy growing up, I made her eat dog poop once, told her it was bubble gum, shoved her head in a toilet for telling mom that I sold their wedding pictures to the neighbor kids for a quarter so I could buy candy at the local store.
Even when we did get along for short periods of time we always managed to get in trouble and it always seem to be my fault... Once we were playing house, I always had to be the dad, and we were pretending like we were going to the store, so we went out to my fathers 1958 Red Chevy, that always shine like a new penny, and I got behind the wheel and Christy sat on the passengers side, pretending she was rolling her hair and off we went. I pulled the shift down into drive and we began to roll. Parked in front of my fathers car was a new 1958 Blue Mercury that belonged to our neighbor across the street. He just happened to be in the yard watching us play and seen the car was moving. He ran, grabbed the bumper of our car and held it until his son could run to our house and tell my dad what was happening. Dad ran out open the car door put the car in park and told us to stay there until he got back. Now Christy didn't have a clue that she was about to get a belt across her butt, and when Dad came back to get us, he grabbed Chris first, all Christy was worried about was he was messing up her hair! She is still like that to this day.

Through the next few years, my mother found out that looks weren't everything.
My father was an alcoholic, womanizer, couldn't hold a job and would leave us for days at a time.

He would come in drunk start an argument with my mother and before the night was over she would get her four children up out of bed, in the middle of the night and take us to our grandma Lil's house. Grandma became a security to me. I was old enough to know what was going on, I was 7 years old, and had spent more time with my grandmother than at home with my family. Grandma lived across from the school that I started, and my grandpa was the crossing guard. Everyday I would get in trouble for walking across the street during lunch to see them. After school I would spend time at grandmas. I would cry to stay the night, and if mother had not seen dad in a few days, she would let me and Christy stay, so she wouldn't have to drag us out of the house later that night if he did come home.

March 30, 1964 was my mother's birthday. My dad had been trying to get help with his drinking, and he had been to a doctor who told him he had a chemical imbalance. Later, Mother told me he just couldn't cope with it. The morning of mom's birthday, they had woken early. Mom was in the kitchen cooking breakfast and dad was in the bedroom getting dressed for the day.

At about 6 am, mom heard a gun shot ring through the house. My dad had shot himself in the head...Christy and I slept in the room across the hall, the noise woke me up. As I walk out of my bedroom, I heard loud screaming coming from outside, mother had run out of the house, to the neighbors to get help. I pushed the door open to my mother and fathers bedroom, to find my father's blood splattered on the wall and him laying in a pool of blood. In shock, I returned to my bedroom and crawled back into my bed, laying there staring at the ceiling , not truly understanding what I had just saw. I heard voices, crying, screaming...the police had come to the room to wake us up and take us to someones house I didn't know. My sisters where taken some place else. As we walked through the living room I could see my mother laying on the couch with nurses and doctors around her, giving her oxygen and trying to help her calm down.

I had nightmares for along time after my father died. I could never tell my mother what I saw because she couldn't talk about my father without crying and I was afraid if I told her what I saw it would make her cry more, so I kept it to myself for several years. Suffering with the memory of a selfish, inconsiderate act of suicide and not really knowing how to tell someone what I had witnessed at the age of 7.

The next thing I remember is my mother telling us that we were going to move to Paragould to be closer to her family. I was devastated! I didn't want to move away from the only security I had ever known. My grandma Lil.

I became even more rebellious, and very angry. I told mom she could leave and take my sisters with her but I was staying with grandma Lil. I remember I spent the night with grandma the last night we where in St.Louis and we were sitting on the couch in the living room watching T.V. I ask her if I could stay with her and go to school. And she said to me, " No , you have to go with your mother, you are the oldest and she needs you to help her with your sisters." I went to bed that night crying, scared of what was going to happen to all of us, me...I laid awake all night listening to the sounds of the city from my safe bed, praying that my grandmother would change her mind before morning and let me stay.

I heard grandma get up early and start breakfast. As I laid in bed, I prayed one last prayer that God would change her mind and let me stay because she couldn't live without me like I couldn't live without her. I got up out of bed and went to the kitchen. I went in and sat down at the table and she walked over and kissed me good morning and ask if I was hungry, I said no, I couldn't eat my stomach hurt. And then I ask her one more time, "Grandma, please let me stay here with you, I promise, I will be nice, I won't get in any trouble and I will be good all my life, I promise, Please let me stay!" With tears in her eyes she turned to me and said " I can't let you stay, you belong with your mother. I will come to visit and you can come to visit and we will always be close, I promise. Your mother needs you." Shortly after my third and final rejection, mother and the girls showed up to get me. Mother had to physically pulled me off of grandma Lil and force me in the car. I cried all the way to Paragould. Even as an adult every time I left my grandma Lil's house I cried all the way to Corning Arkansas....

Moral of this Blog: "We don't have choices about who our parents are or how they treat us, but we do have choices about whether we forgive our parents and heal ourselves."

"Even a child is known by his doings, whether it be pure and whether it be right." Proverbs 20:14