The World I Was Born Into

I entered this Vail of Tears at 3:15 PM on December 08, 1953.  That is what my Dad always said.  I was born at our home.  It was a small, log cabin in extreme Eastern Kentucky.  As best I can recall it was only one story and had very low ceilings.  There was a front porch that ran the length of the front of the house and a back porch on the side of the kitchen.

It seems when one entered through the front door there was a bedroom to the left and a living room to the right with the kitchen being directly behind the living room.  I suppose that bedroom was where I was born.  I was delivered by my grandmother, a midwife, who delivered most of her grandchildren and at least one of her great grandchildren.  Going to a hospital at that point in time and at that place in the country to have a baby was unheard of.  Just get Grannie VanHoose to do it.

I was told they could not get me to cry by smacking my bottom and were getting worried  when Gracie Ratliff (a woman who lived farther up the creek) walked in.  Dad always said I took one look and her and started crying quite loudly.  If the story actually happened it had to just be coincidence as I doubt I could see that far as a newborn.

My parents were 'older' when I was born.  My mother was forty-one and my dad was fifty-one.  They had planned on having two children and I already had a brother and a sister.  I knew for as long as I can recall knowing I was an unplanned accident.  They both thought my mother was too old to get preggers.  Wrong.
Being an accident must be kind of like being adopted.  You just never really feel a part of the family.  Then, the incident of not being able to make me cry caused my mother to always say I was mentally retarded because they did not get me to breathe quickly enough and, therefore, became brain damaged due to lack of oxygen. 

We lived in that house until I was two years old and I have, surprisingly enough, several memories of that place.  Others find that strange and doubt I really do remember anything from those days but I'm sure some of what I remember is really a true memory though others might be "induced", false memories.

Back then my dad was big into politics.  My very first memory is of going off with him and some politician somewhere down the road past Virgil Boyd's house to put up election posters on trees. 

I also remember going to Louisa and being bought a little toy car.  It might have been a police car.  It was made of tin and probably in Japan.  Back in those days Japan bought a lot of used tin from the USA.  I remember one toy train engine that came apart and the inside of the cover still had Maxwell House Coffee on it.  But, back to my little car.  After we got through with "our" business we stopped to see 'Zoobie' Boyd.  I think her real name was Azuba but I never heard her referred to as anything but 'Zoobie'. 

I don't remember anything about the time frame.  It could have been hours, days or weeks later "Bub" and "Frances" (her real name was Anna Frances) Boyd brought my cousin Stevie over and while they were in the house he and I were outside playing with my car.  There was a mud hole in the yard and we would repeatedly run the care through it until it got all filled with mud and muddy water.  I can remember going to a wash tub full of clean water for the laundry and swishing that car around in the tub trying to clean it out.  I don't think if ever worked right after that.

I also remember having a tricycle and my older brother (William) taking me to the top of the hill by the Wash Rock and letting me ride down the hill on my trike by myself.  I did not make it very far before falling over in a rut.  (It was just a dirt road after all and not very level.)

I was told  my sister (Mary Jane) rocked off the back porch with me and it seems I can remember being rocked by someone and watching one of the rockers moving around every time the chair rocked.  They tell me I can't remember that far back but....   I was also told when I was about six months old my brother held me up by my heels to the kitchen ceiling and dropped me on my head.  That, along with the fact my parents were first cousins and that I was mentally retarded should go a long way toward explaining me in the years to follow.

My dad had spent thirty years in the Navy and had retired in 1952.  I can remember hearing when he retired he was drawing about Forty-four dollars a month in retirement.  Out of that meager amount of money he supported the five of us plus my mother's mother and father.  Poppie and Grannie VanHoose lived next house down the creek from us.  And  when I say down the creek that is what I mean.  That dirt road that went past the front of our house entered Nat's Creek and ran in the creek for about a half mile.  To get to my grandparent's house one either waded the creek or followed a narrow, weedy path beside the creek.

That is how a lot of the area around where I was born was.  Going on up the holler (hollow for those too civilized to know) from our house the road ran in and out of the creek bed many times.  At the time I was born there were not many people who lived up the creek from us.  Burnard (?) and Gracie Ratliff and their passel of kids lived up the right fork and Burns and Julie Ratliff lived almost to the head of the left fork.

On the down creek side were my grandparents then the Charlie Blessing place (We lived in that old house from the time I was thirteen until I was nineteen and got married.) and below that was where my Uncle Jerry and Aunt Bernice (pronounced Bur Nes') lived along with Uncle Jerry's son Joe and my cousin Helen.  All in all there were not a whole lot of people in that 'neck of the woods'.

After dad's monthly trips to the nearest store the store owner would put our (and my grandparent's) supplies in a mule drawn wagon and deliver them to us.  I really do not remember any of the stuff about groceries but I've heard the stories often enough.

It is difficult to believe my dad supported two families on less that fifty dollars a month but back then that was a pretty fair sum of money when you owned your home and had almost zero utility bills.  Dad owned one hundred and twenty seven acres including the house where I was born and the  house my grandparents lived in.  Also, prices were nothing like they are now.

Postage stamps were four cents.  Postcards were two cents.  Bazooka Joe bubble gum was two for a penny.  All the candy bars, ice cream novelties were a nickle.  Pop (soda) was a dime.  There was no sales tax on anything.  We had electricity and that is all.  Mother cooked on a propane gas stove and my grandmother cooked on an old coal cook stove.  We had a well for water and an outhouse (toilet) for other purposes.

A gallon of gas was around a quarter. 

And, society there was just different than it is now.  I can never remember us locking the door of any house where we ever lived and never had anyone "break in" or steal anything.  Nobody ever locked their car doors and most times left the keys in and engine running when they had to run into a store or back to the house to get something they forgot.   If you left your headlights on (we had no warning bells back then) and someone noticed it they would open your door and turn off your lights so you did not come back to a dead battery.

Those times and those types of people do not exist much these more modern days.  I started my life in a much simpler time and place.  It was a time and place where people were pretty civil, considerate and helpful to one another.  While I am completely addicted to my comforts and modern conveniences I do miss the simplicity of those days and the general civility of the people.  We knew (and were mostly related to) about everybody who lived within ten miles of our house.  Right now I have no clue what the names of my next door neighbors are.