Home, Sweet Home--My Mother

HOME, SWEET HOME

One day Daddy came home with two surprises—a used 1940 Ford and a job with an oil company. Both were significant because we had never owned a car and employment was hard to come by.
The year was 1944. We lived on a small, dirt farm in North Texas near Daddy’s parents.
An oil boom had hit Texas. It began in 1901 with the advent of Spindletop at Beaumont, Texas, and continued until the 1980’s when the oil industry “went bust.” Employment with an oil company was an open door to a better and more secure life, but to become more financially solvent meant leaving home.
For the next six years, we were transient and homeless. Mother could only take that which she could pack into the trunk of the Ford. She selected clothes for all five of us, plus bedding, a minimum of cookware, and a few dishes. There was only room for one more item—her new portable, single-stitch Featherweight Singer sewing machine.
At first, we moved two or three times a year. Oil fields virtually dotted all of Texas, but Daddy’s company covered parts of North Texas and the South Plains. Those first years, however, must have been excruciating for Mother. Housing was difficult to find, especially for a family with three children.

We first lived with an old woman who had built one slant-roofed room with a bathroom onto the back of her small house. At least we had our own toilet facilities, but we came and went through her front door. That meant tiptoeing through to go outside. Occasionally, she invited Mother and my little sister and I to sit in her living room and visit. My older sister went to school, so she escaped that intolerable time. Mother admonished us not to touch anything and don’t kick our feet. A two-year-old and a four-year-old suffered under those conditions, but I’m certain Mother suffered more. She had no living room of her own.
For a very short time, we stayed in a converted boxcar, generally called a “cot house.” Single men usually inhabited them, but they were a godsend when Daddy could find nothing else.
When I was five, we lived in one room in a big two-story boardinghouse. All kinds of people lived there and we ate family-style at a long table. I thought it was fun.
In more than one town, we lived in a motel, known in the South as a “tourist court.” Again, all five of us lived in one room. Here, I first remember how we ate our meals. With the exception of the boarding house, Mother improvised to feed us. She bought breakfast and lunch from the grocery store. She selected food that did not need refrigeration or cooking. That meant frequent trips to shop, and we walked because Daddy took the car. Common meals were oranges and grapefruit, bananas, small cartons of milk, and bologna or pressed ham sandwiches. We especially favored saltines and cheddar cheese. But the most wonderful thing about living there was that we all went to a café every night. Daddy ordered for all of us and we dined lavishly. I remember chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, apple pie with melted cheddar cheese on top and cold glasses of milk. Once a week, hamburgers and French fries were a reward for being good little girls.
I thought we were rich.
During the later years on the road, our family moved up to one side of a duplex—two entire rooms. While it seemed spacious, it was the coldest place we had lived. My little sister and I would lie on our stomachs at night and peer through the bars of the iron headboard and the cracks of the wall to look outside. Icy wind and dust also blew through those cracks. But Mother had a small kitchen and Daddy was a happy man to come home to Mother’s good cooking.
Daddy wanted us three girls to look pretty, no matter where or how we lived. He polished our white high-top shoes every night, and Mother kept our hair curled and combed. But that was not enough. We might have been transient, but we never appeared to be. Mother sewed on her prized Singer while it sat on an apple crate, a chair, a dresser, or a suitcase. She often had to sit on the floor while sewing. She bought patterns she could use repeatedly by altering, changing, or transforming the basic pieces. She chose pretty, inexpensive fabric and cut out the pieces on the bed or floor. Adept with any kind of needle, she embroidered collars, bodices, and hems with little flowers. Rickrack edged necklines and sleeves. She even made little red corduroy coats and hats that matched. Everywhere we went, strangers commented that we were pretty.
I thought I was beautiful.
When I was in the third grade, we lived in a real house with four rooms, located on the South Plains, near Lubbock. Even though the furniture came with the rented house, we had a real home again. All of us were happy that year, especially Mother. She cooked, cleaned, and dressed us up for church and school exactly as she wished. She placed the Singer sewing machine on a table and left it there all the time. My sisters and I made friends of the neighborhood children, and played outside with them and walked to school. But at the end of the school year, Daddy was to move to yet another oil field.
By this time, Mother was tired in body and weary in mind. She longed for a permanent home for her girls and a big house she could call her own. Daddy agreed and asked the company to station him in one place and he would commute each week, wherever he was required to work. Weekly separations faced us for the next twenty years. He loved us all so much, he built a nice, roomy house, and Mother never needed to pack up again and move down the road.
I’ve often wondered which of my parents sacrificed more during my growing-up years. Both were required to give up something valuable for the sake of their children. Even though Daddy had to live alone during the week, Mother and we three girls always waited in the comfortable home he built for us. He was happy, even though he was often tired and lonely. Mother, on the other hand, needed a home to satisfy the inborn human yearning to build a nest and to nurture her young.
Mother lives in a nursing home now, and my sisters and I are senior citizens. Her mind wanders, she forgets, and she lives in a world all her own. She forgot our names and other family members. She never recalls her six grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. But one thing she remembers is “home.” She always asks if she can go there.