1967
1967:
We lived in this same house when we canned so many vegetables—that was the summer after I was sick in the Wichita hospital. It was during this time that Dad was doing a lot of thinking and talking to others about things, he changed his mind about a lot of philosophy. During the summer we moved from Neodesha to Coffeyville. Dad became a life insurance agent for National Life Insurance Company, and we lived on $88 per week take home pay. The Coffeyville house was the one of the bee stings and the pear tree. This was $49 per month, and we lived in it for about a month without a cookstove because we thought there was a gas leak. It turned out not to be a gas leak, so we finally had a stove, but not before we learned how to can crabapples in the electric coffeepot, and how to heat enough water in the same coffeepot to give five grimy little kids a bath. Fall came, and when fall comes and Dad is not in Texas, it is time to get there. So it was back to Texas. Back to Wylie. Big truck. No house to move into. Never again. By Christmas that year we had moved out of the house we shared for a while with Doc Swanger out on Lake Lavon, and moved up the road to the hay house. This was the Christmas when everyone got a bicycle. We still had the Volkswagen Microbus that I liked and Dad didn’t—but then he was the one who had to fix it when the rubber band kept breaking. This was the year of the mud—Parker Road was being paved, and we spent many long hours getting in and out, stuck and unstuck. The old house was horrid, but it was somewhere to live and forty dollars a month was cheap. It was in this house that one day was one of the absolute low points of my life—one of those times that things had to get better—there was not much way they could have been much worse. It was cold. Grey skies, cold, icy, windy, bitter cold. The water pipes were frozen. The butane tank ran empty. All of you, and I, had the throwing-up flu. It was terrible. But it came to pass.
We lived in this same house when we canned so many vegetables—that was the summer after I was sick in the Wichita hospital. It was during this time that Dad was doing a lot of thinking and talking to others about things, he changed his mind about a lot of philosophy. During the summer we moved from Neodesha to Coffeyville. Dad became a life insurance agent for National Life Insurance Company, and we lived on $88 per week take home pay. The Coffeyville house was the one of the bee stings and the pear tree. This was $49 per month, and we lived in it for about a month without a cookstove because we thought there was a gas leak. It turned out not to be a gas leak, so we finally had a stove, but not before we learned how to can crabapples in the electric coffeepot, and how to heat enough water in the same coffeepot to give five grimy little kids a bath. Fall came, and when fall comes and Dad is not in Texas, it is time to get there. So it was back to Texas. Back to Wylie. Big truck. No house to move into. Never again. By Christmas that year we had moved out of the house we shared for a while with Doc Swanger out on Lake Lavon, and moved up the road to the hay house. This was the Christmas when everyone got a bicycle. We still had the Volkswagen Microbus that I liked and Dad didn’t—but then he was the one who had to fix it when the rubber band kept breaking. This was the year of the mud—Parker Road was being paved, and we spent many long hours getting in and out, stuck and unstuck. The old house was horrid, but it was somewhere to live and forty dollars a month was cheap. It was in this house that one day was one of the absolute low points of my life—one of those times that things had to get better—there was not much way they could have been much worse. It was cold. Grey skies, cold, icy, windy, bitter cold. The water pipes were frozen. The butane tank ran empty. All of you, and I, had the throwing-up flu. It was terrible. But it came to pass.
posted by Anonymous at
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
2 Comments:
The Rubber band? Wow now that is what I am talking about, real stories of ingenuity and hardship to pass on to my children. Now the next time K gets water all over the floor I can tell her how hard someone had to work once just to get hot water! Just kidding.
I had to read again to find what you were referring to with a rubber band and hot water. But now I see--people used to joke about Volkswagens that they quit a lot because they ran by winding up a rubber band and it kept breaking. Has been a long time since this was written. I also see several places that need expanding, so I will do that soon, as soon as we get the Crockett house ready for the hurricane evacuees to move in.
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