there was the word… Oh wait I don’t want to go that far back!
In the begining the sperm meets the egg. I can’t imagine how or why my mother and father ever got to that point and created not only me but my four brothers, but suffice it to say, they did. They got married and they managed to stay married and make each other miserable for 29+ years! Ok maybe not ALL 29 years but for most the 27 years I was involved because I sure don’t remember any point in time where they brought each other any happiness that lasted more than 24 hours.
Mother claims she was a virgin before they got married or at least she claims she wasn’t pregnant. However, she won’t answer any questions about when my older brother was born in relation to her anniversary. I don’t even know what year she was married and what year or month he was born. I just know he was about 2 years older than I am and he died at birth. She says she never even laid eyes on him (she says it) so maybe it is too painful to speak about her deceased eldest son.
Marriage meant something back in those days. A hell of a lot more than a fancy dress and a big party that breaks the bank. My mother had neither of those things. She wore a suit and went to the courthouse which is odd considering she was attending a Bible College when she married my father. There MUST have been a preacher around somewhere who could have/would have married them.
Well, never mind, they got married. Phyllis Ann Fate the daughter of Della and Charles Fate from Clay Center, Nebraska became Mrs William Dale Gavin son of Iola and Timothy Leo Gavin also from Clay Center. The bride and groom determined that they would make their home in Cinncinnati, Ohio. They only managed this independence until I was five years old when they packed me and my three younger brothers up and moved us back home to the loving arms of their families in Nebraska.
The groom had recently received a medical discharge from the army for reasons of unstable mental health when they got married. What that instability was has never been adequately explained to his children. He had a “nervous breakdown” due to the fact that he was too young to have been made a Military Policeman according to Phyllis. According to his sister, Christine, he had “the depression.” William or Billy or Bill as he was known was in and out of the VA medical system for the rest of his life for “nervous breakdowns.”
I’m not even sure how old Bill was at the time. According to the official death certificate he was 47 when he died in 1979 which would have made him 20 when I was born. My Mother turned 23 in December the year I was born on September 5th, 1952. She was surprised to learn he was three years younger than she was. She thought it was only two years.
My grandmother helped Bill get into the service by lying to the recruiter about how old he was. The story goes that she told him he was 15. He may have only been 14. These discrepancies in my father’s age and the fact that I could not get my grandmother to talk about it after the funeral have led me to speculate that my grandfather may not have been my father’s father.
That and the fact that my grandfather and father never got along and some drunken arguments I overheard as a very young child but didn’t understand and can’t even remember what was said. Just my grandfather yelling nasty things at my father.
Plus I never thought my Dad looked like any of the other kids. Except Kenny and Kenny was skinny while Dad tended towards portly real early in life. It’s just pure speculation mind you. I don’t like to think my Grampa was not my Grampa because I loved that old reprobate dearly.
My mother’s family would have been considered well-to-do if not wealthy pre-depression. She was the youngest daughter in a family of 6 youngsters and had one younger brother. They were farmers but they were gentlemen farmers and prosperous.
Unfortunately a series of tragedies overtook my branch of the Fates. My Grandfather was severely injured in a farming machinery accident and his hospital and doctor bills were enormous. He survived but he would never fully recover and eventually he was institutionalized for 35 years. (I never met him, he died when I was 6 months old.)
Then there was the depression and the failure of the banks where Grandfather had the majority of his money invested . The family managed to hold on to the farm during the depression and they even bought a car so they could travel to visit my Grandfather in the hospital but they definitely began to learn the meaning of the word economize. My eldest Uncle and unmarried Aunt had to drop out of school to work on the farm and some of the land was let go fallow which was probably just as well since most of Nebraska ended up in Illinois during the dirty 30s due to the drought.
The Gavin’s homesteaded in South Dakota which is another story in and of itself. My Great-Grandfather lost that homestead during the depression. The bank foreclosed and then the bank went bust. I think all the topsoil ended up in Mud Lake, Wisconsin anyway. They say that the wind would blow so hard and the dirt was so fine and dry that it would blow right through closed windows and pile up behind the curtains on the window sills.
My favorite novel is The Grapes of Wrath because it tells the story of my parent’s generation. It helps me understand them in a way. My parents didn’t go out to California and have those kinds of hardships but maybe they woudl have been better off if they had.
Instead they became neurotic as hell about food and using things until there was no more use in them and keeping shit just in case you might need it even though you had never had any use for such a thing in your whole life. I always thought my generation was going to be remembered for its pacifism but here we are with a President and in a situation that is anything but pacifist. We will probably be remembered for that–the generation that couldn’t make up its mind. I don’t know what my kids will be remembered for…what have they done besides be? hmmm…
But I digress, this is about my progenitors. My depression baby parents and their neuroses. How my family got to Nebraska. Grandpa’s family had a tradition that the sons either became farmers, preists or career military. Land being scarce, farming was usually reserved for the eldest son if that’s what he wanted. The Gavins lean towards being more than a little irreverent so there aren’t all that many preists.
We’re more likely to produce scrappy feisty bowlegged little red-headed fellas with a bad case of short man’s complex. That’s what my Grandfather’s side of the family looks like anyway. These boys need a firm hand to guide them and channel their energies. Give them a strong leader they can look up to (figuratively and literally) and they’ll follow him anywhere. Excellent soldiers and sailors. My Grandfather joined the Army and was eventually stationed at the Hastings Army/Navy Base.
Oh wait I forgot to tell you about that. I’m not real clear on the timeline anymore but sometime before we got involved in WWII the USA began gearing up for our participation in the proceedings and built an ARMY/NAVY (yes you read that right NAVY) base just about right smack dab halfway between Hastings and Clay Center Nebraska. I just looked it up–they condemned the land and commenced to building in 1942 which caused a boomtown situation for Clay Center and Hastings and Harvard where the Air Force had an airfield.
In doing so they swallowed up nearly 3/4 of Grandmother and Grandfather Fate’s farm, including the house and barn yard. There was still enough of the farm left that had they wanted to they could have continued farming but they chose not to. My Uncle Merton saw this as an excellent way to opt out as did my Aunt Neva and they all went swanning off to Bible college while Grandmother and her youngest son Art moved into town.
Now I have no idea how the clan got to Nebraska on my Grandmother Iola’s branch of the family. I don’t recall ever hearing her talk about it. I’m sure she must have, my Grandmother was a talker but she sort of left the story telling up to Grampa because he loved to do it and he was good at it. It was the one way he interacted positively with us grandkids.
I can’t even recall hearing how she and Grandpa met and courted. She was all of fifteen if even that old when he took up with her because she was only sixteen when my Daddy was born. She lived in Loup City which was a pretty little town on the South Loup River but awfully out of the way for a young soldier to be catting around in. It’s a pity I don’t know that story.
At anyrate Grandma said her family was Protestant Irish as far back as she could trace her family tree which wasn’t very far. I did a little genealogy of my own and found out that Grandma’s maiden name of Sinner is generally considered to be of Russian Jewish origin. Interesting…
Her family was tall and tended to be portly if not downright obese. She was, my Dad was, her brother Harold was, sister Ina was, and so am I. I think my brothers have managed to stay thin enough to escape obese but I know they have to work at it. My father was 6′2″ tall and weighed well over 300 pounds when he died. His weight problem was an issue his entire adult life.
When Grandpa brought the family to Clay Center, Grandma went to work in a cafe as a cook and then later while Grampa was off fighting the war, she worked in the bomb factory. They were living in a house out in the country and doing a little truck farming near my Mother’s home place when there was an accident at the factory that blew the windows out of the one room school house my Dad and Mom and aunts and uncles went to. The explosion knocked them right out of their desks.
Mom and Dad were so shook up they cut across the fields to hurry home so they could find out if any of their kin were hurt or dead. Daddy held the barbed wire feces apart so Mom could get through without catching her dress. That was the one story my Mother ever told about my Daddy when he was young that had any hint of tenderness.
My Grandfathers didn’t fare very well when it came to farm machinery. What I remember most about my Grampa besides the fact that he could tell one hell of a good story was that he was always in a lot of pain and that he didn’t have any fingers on his right hand. Grampa made it through both WWII and the Korean War just fine but he lost a fight with a corn sheller and his fingers and one of his testicles. The story is that he picked his fingers and his testicle up off the ground and put them in his coat pocket before he passed out. That’s how plucky he was. I think he embellished that story a bit. But he was lucky to survive that mangling.
He went on to add insult to injury by getting drunk as often as possible and totaling out the family cars. I can recall at least 4 spectacular heaps of crumpled junk sitting in their driveway by the time I was 10. Then ironically he had the worst accident of all that left him completely disabled for the rest of his life. He was with his son-in-law when a drunk driver ran a red light and smashed into the car on the passenger’s side going about 60 mph.
My Mother really hated my Father’s family’s common ways. She was embarrased by them. She was particularly dismayed that her mother-in-law had had a baby 6 months after both of her eldest children had been born. I have an aunt 6 months younger than I am and had my brother lived he would have had an uncle six months younger and an aunt 2 and a half years younger! That was not to be borne with dignity! but for heaven’s sake, my Grandmother was only 12 or 13 years older than my Mother.
Her father-in-law’s public drunkeness was even more distressing. He was one step up from the town drunk who sat under a tree near the tavern most of the day and night because he was too drunk to walk home. Then there was her brother-in-law’s troubles with the law. Kenny had been to court for underage drinking, driving while intoxicated, and being a public nuisance.
All in all her in-laws were making it hard for her to hold her head up in town. And Iola had the audacity to go to church every Sunday and act as if she owned the place. I’m not sure why that mattered since Mother never went to church. She sent us kids while she stayed home with Dad and enjoyed a little afternoon delight on Sunday Morning. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. I figured it out when I was a teenager. We walked the mile or so in all but the coldest weather and then Daddy drove us and Grandma Iola took us to her house until Daddy came to get us.
My mother once felt it necessary to tell me that the one thing she had no complaints about my father was that he was good in bed. I was startled that she said this to me particularly in the context. I was telling her that had it not been for my husband’s understanding patience and gentleness I may very well have been put off sex forever. This was after my father was she had filed for divorce and my father had died and she knew I was in counseling for sexual abuse. What in hell was she thinking?
Mother came from a family that did not smoke or drink or dance or play cards or swear or break a sweat on Sundays. They eschewed all things of the flesh and tempered their pleasures by dwelling on godly things. They were stoic in times of sorrow and setbacks and temperate in celebrating joys and successes. Their women were modest in dress and manner and always wore a hat to church on Sunday because it says in the Bible that a woman should cover her head in the Lord’s house. Their men were even tempered and soft spoken but manly. They did not frequent bars or spit in public. Children were to be seen but preferably not heard. A child should not speak until spoken to.
Grandmother Fate told me that in the old country and in Ohio they would have been Presbyterian but seeing as there were no Presbyterian churches available where they were, they chose the least objectionable church to attend. I don’t think she had ever quite reconciled herself to all the beliefs held by THE Christian Church because it was not Calvinistic in nature. She was something of an elitist. But her parents were definitely against Methodism and Lutheranism and Catholicism which were the only other choices at the time the choices were being made.
She could have changed back to Presbyterian and traveled the 23 miles to church in Hastings later in life but Grandmother was loyal if nothing else. Besides, church was pretty much the center of her social life. Too hell with the theological stuff, she could sort all of that out with God later. ;^)
The Gavins on the other hand thought the Fates were snooty snobs who believed their shit didn’t stink. They found my Mother’s reserved demeanor offputting and arrogant. They felt her refusal to join in their games and dancing was a sign of judgemental finger pointing (which it was) and they resented her for it. They talked about her behind her back and went out of their way to shock and disgust her.
The Gavins were emotional and excitable. They lived life on the edge. They weren’t adverse to crying if tears were called for but they much preferred to laugh and did so frequently and often at each others expense. They had a great love of babies and young children who were cuddled and indulged and much was made over their antics.
The adults often joined in the childrens games or included the older children in the adult games, teaching them how to play cards by partnering up with them at the card table. I learned how to play pitch and euchre at the age of 10 by sitting on my father’s lap and telling him which card I thought he should play. He would play the correct card and then tell me why I was right or wrong. The whole table would be full of adult/kid teams like this.
Mother’s family would have just been horrified if they had seen such goings on. Teaching young children these things would have been anathema. Grandmother Fate didn’t even have a deck of playing cards in the house. She considered them the devil’s instrument. I’m not sure where she got that from. She did have a set of cards with numbers on them in four different colors and one card was a Rook/Crow that you played a game called Rook with. You could play any of the games we played with regular cards with these cards–they just didn’t have the spade, diamond, club, heart markings on them.
Grandmother Fate clearly disapproved of practically everything the Gavins did. I remember one time in particular that she told me that just because I was related to certain people I didn’t have to do everything they did. I believe that was the closest my Grandmother and I ever came to a showdown when I was young. I got really mad at her and she knew I was mad but I didn’t say anything, I just left and went down to Grandma Gavin’s house (they lived 2 doors from each other). She kept her opinions to herself after that.
Sooo…Why did Phyllis marry Bill? He was a handsome devil at 17 and he probably had a certain charisma which made him a very successful salesman later in life. But she didn’t like his family; he was three years younger than she was; he only had an eighth grade education; his mother had lied to get him into the Army because he was a hellraiser who got into trouble with the law and she couldn’t control him; he’d just gotten out of the looney bin while she was in Bible College earning straight As and Bs, taking courses she enjoyed, and there were no problems regarding money to pay for tuition or room and board. What in hell was she thinking? She who always worried what the neighbors were thinking about every damn thing that happened around our house and how it might reflect on HER.
I don’t get it…
