Remembering my mother

It occured to me that I had told about my father but said very little about Mam. Annie Davies was born 1899, the middle daughter of John and Mary. The above photos show her first at 14 years old, then somewhere in the 40's with my Dad, and the last one was on her 80th birthday. She lived to be 83. A tomboy as a child, she always shows up in childhood photos with her hair mussed up and a slightly defiant look on her face. I have a feeling she was a handful! She used to tell about her childhood years when she had to go to her grandparent's dairy early each morning and carry heavy pails of milk door to door delivering same. All this done before she went to school. She left school at 14 and worked as a maid and nanny for her great-aunt. She was allowed Wednesday evenings off for three hours and got her room and board and a very small allowance. My father made her leave that position when he started dating her and she worked for a doctor and his wife thereafter until she married. She was a very hard worker - running a 17 room hotel (all meals provided) until I was born, then they moved to a smaller home (6 bedrooms) and every summer would rent the extra rooms out on what was known as 'apartments'. This meant that each family would provide my mother with the food they wanted cooked each meal, each day. She had a four burner gas stove, yet somehow was able to serve up to three families at a time, plus us with a complete meal - consisting most times of four different meats, different vegetables and different deserts. She had stacking saucepans to accomplish this.

My mother was not demonstrative, and did not express her love in hugs, kisses and compliments. And she didn't share much of herself - no fun times together cooking, and I left home not knowing how to boil an egg! But looking back, I realized how my mother was ALWAYS THERE. She fed us well, kept a good home, taught us the good values and behavior and would always be waiting when I came home from school, with a cup of tea and something she had baked, and in the winter, warm hands to rub my cold feet and hands in front of the fire. A tiny woman, about 4 foot 10 inches in height and only reached 100 lbs. once in her life, when she was pregnant with my older brother. I left home when I was only 16 and four years later moved to Canada, and subsequently to this country. I had my mother visit me for three months at a time when she was 77, 79 and 81 (after my father had died) and I sometimes reflect on how I didn't really know her as a person. I wish now that I had stopped to realize then just how strong my mother was - not physically, but emotionally. I know a lot of my 'stick-to-it-ness' comes from her and some of my strengths. Unfortunately the alcoholicism came from her too, and may be that's what got in the way of our really knowing and understanding each other. But she was a good mother and I'm glad that I believe that she hears me now when I tell her that she is admired and loved by me.

Grandpa's turn:

He calls it Tales of Woe and Happiness 4/25/31 to 9/3/37: I was born 4/25/31 in the late afternoon. The doctor was called but arrived too late to do anything. We were living in a 'tank house' at the time. One room square, three stories high. The tank at the top was a large 12' diam and about 8' deep. The water would be pumped up to it and then gravity would provide the water for domestic use. The lower two rooms was our home, about 3/4 mile south of Delano, CA, between it and the airport. It was always a bit of a joke in the family that I was a 'free' baby because the doctor died shortly after I was born and never billed us. When he registered by birth he failed to give my name, so my birth certificate just said 'baby' Topper. When I joined the Highway Patrol I had the rare opportunity to call myself by any name I wanted, but I stuck with Richard Kenneth.

This was during the worst of the Depression and financially we struggled, and would continue to do so for most of the next 10 years. My father Lee (shown above with Lowney about this period) was the youngest of a family of 10, and about half of them lived the same general area during this time. They were all primarily farm laborers. Lee & Lowney moved into this general area June 1927 (before the Grapes of Wrath days and the mass migration from Oklahoma to California) and good help was 45 to 50 cents an hour. But the Crash of 29 had driven the wages down to 20-25 cents by the time I was born.

My first memory of anything was the death of my little brother Joe. He died on his first birthday. As it was told to me, we were all living at the Moser Place (an 80 acre farm (vines and open land) about a mile east of Delano. The farm had a resevoir to hold the irrigation water. Our house (about 150 feet from the reservoir) had a fence, but somehow Joe Allen got out and was found in the resevoir. My parents jumped in the car and drove him to the doctors, but he was declared d.o.a. My only personal memory is standing in the driveway with Hazel and Bill and Uncle Albert who was visiting us at the time watching them drive away. The following year Uncle Albert himself was killed in an automobile accident. Another one of my father's brothers, Joe, died about this time also. He owned an orange orchard and had fallen from a ladder, piercing himself in the back with a branch. It never healed properly and he died, leaving his widow Edith who continued to be very close to our family and was a huge help to us physically and financially.

Late 1935, the whole family moved to Porterville into a rented house on D Street. Life and finances were a little better with Dad getting some oil field work as a roughnecker or driller. It paid a lot better than farm labor, but the work was inconsistent. So life was feast or famine most of the time. I

can remember during this time, my mother's sense of humor coming across. She would make biscuits for breakfast every morning and this particular morning we all dug into them as usual, only to find them inedible - we couldn't bite them. She laughed, and cried April Fools!! She had put rags in the middle of each. Another memory of living there at that time was the day Louise was born. We (Hazel, Bill and I) were taken to Lon and Irene Sheltons (Irene was Jo and Edith's daughter). Lon owned his own truck business, so they lived much better than we did, and when she brought out 'store-bought' cereal in the morning (Wheaties) and said 'dig in' we thought we had died and gone to heaven. UNTIL! The milk was poured on and we dug in - Oh No! Canned Milk. None of us could eat it.

We moved back to Delano and the Moser place again the winter of 36/37 and we got our first bicycle. We would take turns driving about 1/2 mile up and down the road - non stop from dawn to dusk. That poor bike never got a rest except when we were asleep or in church (the latter being quite often as my mother was very religious).

September 1937 I started school. Cecil Avenue Elementary School in Delano. I actually ended up my 8th grade at this school and attended the school for various periods of time during the 3rd, 4th year also - along with 18 other elementary school.

You can see the other picture at the beginning which would have been taken about the spring of 36. Being a kid at that time was so different from now. No TV, sometimes no radio, no pre-school, no kindergarten and noone tried to teach children before they went to school except bible stories which we got on a daily basis, along with our numerous prayers during the day (which certainly didn't hurt us). Children were simply expected to play - ball games, hide and seek, tag and anything our imaginations came up with. We climbed trees, roughhoused and generally behaved just as kids should!. It got rough at times. Both Bill and I were knocked unconscious by falling out of trees, and once Bill was knocked out by falling out of a moving car. My second time was playing baseball and running from third to base meeting up with the cat running home! My mother had called the cat to feed it. That ground was hard!

Schooling itself followed the path of "See Dick, Run Dick, See Dick run" in the 1st grade, leaning to write your name in the 2nd, tell time by the 3rd, math along the way up to multiplecation and some fractions by the 4th. I had a speech impediment at this time which made me difficult to understand. Bill very often had to interpret what I said to our elders, but from about 4 years on I was always asked to recite a poem or something at Church! I was called "Dickie Boy" by many of my elders - sure glad THAT stopped!

More about school years next time.......................Grandpa

Debbie, Blake and Amber visited this past week and we really enjoyed it. Amber was full of questions about when we were young, and it made me realize how little we can imagine about 70 years ago when we are 13!. I grew up in the War (World War 2 that is), which in Great Britain raged from 1939 to 1945. I grew up with rationing (1 egg, 1 oz. sugar, 1oz flour, etc. per person per week) and blackout (heavy drapes that had to be pulled at night so no light leaked out from the homes). I was a kid, so I had a special ration book which allowed me to have 1/4 lb. of candy each month - I waited excitedly for the 1st of each month to come. I was 8 when the war was over and they turned on the street lights again. They terrified me. I had to walk to and from school in the dark in the winter and with the lights my shadow would 'follow' me as I passed the light and I always thought it was someone creeping up on me. Funny how I had walked to and from school from 4 years on by myself in the dark and not be afraid until they turned the lights on. We would hear the German bombers go overhead everynight on their way to bombing Liverpool. The sirens would sound and we would sit and wait for the 'all clear'. There was a real fear of gas warfare and everyone was issued gas masks. Mine was made to look like Mickey Mouse - to make it less frightening. We were cautioned to never touch anything metal that we might find on the beaches - it very well could be a mine that had floated up. I can remember the day the European war ended, just like it was yesterday. My mother and I were returning from shopping on a bus, it stopped at a bus stop and someone jumped on shouting The War is Over, The War is Over. There was dancing in the streets. The town band went on the Promenade by the front sea and played until the small hours of the morning while we danced. I was allowed to stay up. The next day, they had street parties where tables and chairs were pulled out in the middle of the road (no cars in those days, since no petrol (gas)). All the women pooled their sugar and flower supplies together and baked cakes and muffins. Hard to think that way now - with my cupboard full, my home safe and only money preventing me from buying. But I'm glad I experienced it. Keeps me ever vigilant on the cost of freedom.