Memories of Mom and Dad

By: Jerry Blackerby

Most of these memories are my own recollections. A few are things that Mom or Dad told me. A lot of these are things that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren may have never heard.

Dad:

Dad was a country boy. He hardly knew his mother, she died when he was four. He was raised by his father, Papa, and his oldest sister, Laura. Everyone in the family called Dad’s father, Papa. I have written about him in Papa. Dad and his twin sister, Lessie, were the youngest surviving children.

Dad’s family lived in the Rock Creek community, north of Mineral Wells. It was about three miles to school and they had to walk each day. There were not any school buses at that time in that area.

Dad told me about how he and another boy at school nearly had a fight on the playground. As they reentered the school, Dad told the other boy that he knew what he was. The boy told the teacher that Lester had called him a bad name. The teacher asked Dad what he had called him. Dad told him. The teacher looked at the boy and said he guessed he really did know what he was.

I think Dad sat in front of that boy in class. Once, Dad passed gas quietly and when the teacher smelled the stink, he looked at the boys. Dad looked innocent as could be. The teacher blamed the other boy, behind Dad. The other boy said that he knew it was Lester, because he saw him "tilt up" as he passed the gas.

One time Dad was out hunting when he was a young teenager. He had a single-shot 22 with him. He sat down against a tree and daydreamed for a while. He leaned the rifle against the tree trunk. He looked up and realized that a snake had crawled up near him and reared up. He jumped up and ran. The snake chased him. He completely forgot that he had that rifle back there. The snake was what we called a blue racer back then.

He got to where Papa was plowing and told him about the snake chasing him. Papa looked at him and said, “Sonkey, where’s your gun?” Papa and some of the close friends called Dad “Sonkey.” I never knew where that nickname came from.

Dad worked hard on the farm for Papa and did not complete high school because he had to help on the farm. He dropped out during the 10th grade. He married mom when he was 20 years old and they also farmed. I think he share-cropped the first few years they were married.

Dad was a small man, only five foot six inches tall. He was lightweight, but very muscular. His back rippled with the knots of muscles on it. He and Uncle Johnny, another very small man, used to win bets at the cotton gin lifting weights against other men. Most men could not believe that these two small men could lift the weight they could.

Mom:

Mom was the first born child of her parents. She grew up in a Christian environment. Many of her ancestors were Baptist preachers. Mom was a very serious person, more like her father than her mischievous, fun loving, although very much a Christian, mother.

Mom was saved and joined the church when she was 14. Granny had Mom taking piano lessons. The only music Mom wanted to play was church music. Shortly after joining the church, Mom began playing for the church services and continued for most of her life.

Mom was a dedicated, devoted Christian. She loved Jesus. She worked faithfully in the church all of her life. She played the piano, taught Sunday school, or did anything else that was needed. She told everyone about her precious Jesus and His saving grace.

Getting married:

Mom and Dad began dating while Mom was in high school. Most of the time, they went to church, an occasional movie or would ride around with Dad’s twin sister and her date. One Saturday, late in March 1931, they borrowed Granddad’s car, which was an enclosed car, to drive to Stamford for a movie instead of the open roadster, Dad drove.

Instead of a movie, the two went to a preacher in Stamford, Rev. Sam Morris, and were married. They returned home about the time they would have if they had been to the movie. Dad left Mom there and went back to his home on the farm. The school had a rule that if a girl married, she could not graduate and Mom was a senior that year.

The couple continued to apparently date as they had previously and Dad went home every night. About two weeks later, the marriage license came in the mail and they disclosed that they had married to Granny and Granddad. Since Granddad worked in the Post Office, he had seen the letter arrive and suspected what it was.

Only a few weeks of school were left. Mom wanted to graduate. If the school superintendent found out about the marriage, he would expel Mom from school and she would not graduate.

Granddad suggested that Dad move in. Dad normally drove to the house from the farm each morning about breakfast time and took Mom to school. He was there until after dark most nights. Granny and Granddad lived on the edge of town and the only houses nearby were relatives. No one else would ever know.

A few weeks later, Mom graduated and Granny went to the superintendent and reminded him that he had made a statement about a married woman never graduating. She then told him about Mom and Dad. Too late, Mom was already graduated. Mom’s sister, Jo, in a story about Granny and Granddad wrote that Mom told the superintendent. Mom and Dad had told me the story and said it was Granny, which is more like something Granny would do than something Mom would do.

I called Mom’s mother, Granny Grunt. She was a wonderful person, as I have written about in Granny Grunt.

On the farm, sharecropping:

Mom and Dad moved out to a farm, sharecropping. Shortly after moving to the farm, Dad heard an eerie howling sound a couple of nights. It was downright scary. Dad thinks it was one of the local boys trying to scare them. He succeeded, but Dad also scared whoever it was.

Dad eased out the back door with a 22‑rifle after hearing the first howl one night. In the dark, he stepped around the side of the house. As another eerie howl began, he aimed high above the sound and pulled the trigger. The sound stopped in mid-howl. It never reoccurred and no one ever admitted to it. Dad did not give whoever it was the pleasure of knowing that he was scared, either.

Dad pulled pranks on Mom their entire life. Sometimes I wonder how they stayed together with some of the pranks he pulled.

Once they were working in the field and Dad picked a stinging nettle and brought it to Mom. He asked her to smell it and shoved it up against her nose. It made her nose itch real bad.

Another time, Dad left Mom working and went into the bushes to take care of a call of nature. When he came back, very seriously, he asked Mom which finger or fingers she used when she wiped her bottom.

Mom was very naïve and thought about it for a moment before holding up her index and middle finger. Dad laughed and said he’d rather use paper.

Now and then, Mom got a laugh on Dad. Dad was working in the barn and a small rat ran up his britches leg. It got as high as his inside thigh before he grabbed it through the cloth. Every time he would try to turn loose to undo his overalls, it would move.

He could not unfasten his overalls with only one hand. He screamed and screamed for Mom to come help him. When she arrived and found what the problem was, Dad had already squeezed the rat to death and did not know it. He was afraid to turn loose.

Mom helped Dad unfasten his overalls and get out of them. Then she stood back and laughed at Dad for once. Dad had been so scared that the rat would get a little higher and bite him on his privates that he had squeezed the rat to death.

They had a stile (set of steps) that crossed a fence. Once as Mom was going over the stile, wasps flew up her dress and stung her. The wasps had built a nest under the stile and she disturbed them by stepping on the steps of the stile. I am sure the stings hurt, but Mom had a surefire method of easing the sting of a wasp. She made a poultice of vinegar and soda and put it on the sting while it was bubbling. I have used that many times since and it really works.

Mom really impressed some neighbors when she showed them she could handle a mean bull as I have written in A Mean Bull.

Granddad bought a farm that Mom and Dad could farm for him. At least someone in the family would be getting a part of the profits from the farm rather than some other landowner.

They were living on this farm when I was born. When I was nearly two years old, fell against a hot stove and burned my face next to my eye. Dad rode bareback to town to get medication, as I have written in The Bareback Ride.

I can barely remember this farm. I remember seeing a mouse come out from behind the piano. I was at one end of the piano and that old mouse came out and looked at me. I started toward it and it went back behind the piano and headed for the other end. I ran down to the other end and it stood there and looked at me. It then went back toward the other end. I ran back and forth to each end of the piano playing with that mouse for several minutes. Mom sat there and laughed about that incident when it happened, even though she normally was death on mice and rats.

I remember being terrified during a noisy thunderstorm. Mom took me into her arms and taught me to recite the 23^rd Psalm, as I have written about in I’ve Never Walked Alone.

While on the farm, Dad realized he was not saved and was saved because of Mom’s witness. He began to feel that God wanted him to preach, but he did not feel he could, as I have written about in Victory in Jesus.

Dad had a heart attack when he was 25 and was told that he would not live to see 30. With Mom’s care he actually lived to be almost 83. He could not stand up to the hard work required on the farm. Granddad built us a small two-room house just south of them in town. Later he added a small bedroom for me before my sisters were born.

Leaving the farm:

Dad left the farm and began working at whatever he could to make a living. He worked at filling stations, feed stores, an ice house and at a parking garage in Sweetwater. He had to limit how much he lifted because of angina pain. Dad was also a volunteer fireman, which would serve him a few years later.

He shot craps (dice) with the some of the other locals around Anson. Apparently, Dad was pretty good or lucky and did not lose very often. He said that he won more than he lost. Once, a man was crying about losing his families grocery money to Dad. Dad gave it back to him and made him promise to never gamble again.

A few days later, he saw the man back shooting craps. Dad jumped all over that person about gambling with the family grocery money. Dad may have gambled a little, but he was careful about feeding his family first.

People can think what they please about Dad, but he was a good man. He always put his family first. He worked at multiple jobs to keep food on our table.

We moved into the house and I slept on a couch or sofa next to Mom and Dad's bed. Dad sometimes had nightmares during the night. I remember waking up with him screaming or doing crazy things. Once he dove out of bed and broke his collar bone. He was dreaming that a stack of feed was falling on him and he was trying to get out of the way. Dad worked in a feed store at that time. The nightmares went on for many years.

At Christmas, Dad woke me with a windup caterpillar climbing a board to get up to me. It scared me. We went to Dad's brother Clarence's house north of Mineral Wells to visit a week or so after Christmas. They lived on the Kingston place at that time. Someone there had gotten a similar toy that must have been like a toy tank because I remember it shooting sparks.

That trip to Uncle Clarence's was the one where my first memory of a radio comes from. One of the early Joe Louis fights occurred while we were there. Uncle Clarence had a party line telephone. Someone piped the fight on the telephone line and everyone listened to it on the phone.

Uncle Clarence had built a crystal radio set and had the fight on the radio. Everyone listened a little on the crystal radio, but mostly took turns listening on the phone. That is my earliest memory of a radio. I was amazed that the sound could come through the open air and through that radio.

I could half-way understand that sound could carry over a wire for a telephone, but through the air invisibly for radio was a mystery. Radios fascinated me from that time on and I have made a living in electronics since I was grown.

I also remember sitting around one night and everyone making shadow images on the wall with their hands. I was fascinated with how some of the images looked like real animals or other objects. They would hold their hands between the lamp and the wall to make the images. Papa was really good at making shadow images.

There was a grocery truck that came by their farm each week. This was a truck, with sides that could be raised and all kinds of groceries were in it. They could pick things out. They could also order things and he would bring them out next time. This man ran a small grocery and made a route through the area each week. He would stop at different farms on different days of the week.

One night in Anson, Dad brought home a coyote pup for me. Mom convinced him that coyotes would revert wild and he took it away the next day. He then brought me a little white puppy dog. When they asked me what I wanted to call him, I said “Moses.” Serious-minded Mom immediately suggested that Moses was not an appropriate name for a dog, but her mother, who I called Granny Grunt, said, “Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and took care of them; why not let Moses take care of Jerry when he is out playing?” Sure enough, Moses and I became inseparable.

Early one morning, before daylight, Mom sent me to Granny Grunt’s for a bowl of sugar. Granny Grunt came to the door, looked at me and said, “Jerry, who came with you?” “Just me and my Moses,” I replied.

One time Dad was giving me a spanking inside the house. He thought Moses was going to come through the screen door to get him. Uncle Jimmy said that Moses put him on top of a car a couple of times when he tried to spank me. Moses disappeared while we lived in Sweetwater.

Sometime while living at Anson, I got a tricycle. Mom and I went to town with me riding my tricycle. I always went around with my mouth open and my tongue sticking out. I bumped into a curb and my mouth closed causing me to bite my tongue pretty bad. Mom took me to old Doc Bowyer and I think he just taped my mouth shut and had me suck soup and other foods with a straw for a few days. I don't think he sewed it up at all. I still have the scar on my tongue.

Remembering Doc Bowyer reminds me of having a bone felon in my finger. We had gone fishing south of Anson to the Clear Fork of the Brazos river and when we got back, the middle finger on the left hand was swollen. Everyone thought something had bit it. Doc Bowyer said that I had a bone felon.

He lanced the finger, under the finger nail, each day for four or five days. The last day he also lanced it behind the finger nail. He let me hold a real human skull while he lanced my finger. That last day I dropped or threw that skull and it shattered. He grabbed me up and was about to throw me when Mom grabbed him and stopped him. Doc Bowyer was a different kind of man. He was apparently a good doctor, but was very rough.

On one of the fishing trips to the Clear Fork of the Brazos, Dad took me wading. I was between three and four at that time. Dad was walking along in knee deep water. I was trailing him slightly and a few feet to his side. Suddenly, I stepped in a hole and Dad did not know it. He continued walking along.

Mom was watching from the bank and began screaming. Dad looked back and saw me bobbing up and down in a hole that was over my head. He dove back and grabbed me. That incident created a little fear of water, which followed me the rest of my life.

I had a bad habit of playing with fire when I was very little, even though I had been burned as a two year old. Dad and his father, Papa, cleared some cactus in the pasture next to us. They piled them into large piles and said they would burn up. I kept asking why we didn't set them on fire. I was waiting to see them burn.

As we came home one time from town, the pasture was burning. Dad just knew that I had set that pasture on fire. I got a real good spanking for that, but I didn't set it on fire. That is one spanking that I did not deserve. I probably deserved every other spanking I received and more, but not that one. I was with them and could not have set it. I guess we never found out what started that fire.

I can barely remember Dad driving up to the front of the house and telling me to get Mom. He could not get out of the car. He had twisted his knee real bad, playing baseball with boot-style shoes on.

I think he was playing second base and his heel had caught as he turned to break for the bag. He twisted the knee real bad. The guys helped get him in the car and he drove home. Mom helped get him in the house. His knee bothered him the rest of his life.

For more memories of Mom and Dad, go to More Memories of Mom and Dad-Page 1.

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