The Texas Relatives

Opened a paper bag the other day and came upon letters from the mid-70s from my mother's oldest sister, Gladys, in Texas, to Sister, my aunt whom I knew growing up.

Now, these were the Sheffield siblings: Gladys, born ca. 1906-07; Allie, named after his father but later changed it to Allen, born 1910; Della (Sister), born 1912; Thelma Juanita, my mother, born 1915; Genevieve, the baby, born after my mother sometime.

The only one whose year of birth I know for sure is my mother.

Gladys did not go into the home with her four younger siblings in 1921, the home being the Salvation Army orphanage in El Paso, Texas. At sixteen, she was considered too old.

Allen, like all boys, was kicked out when he turned twelve, and Sister, Juanita, and Genevieve remained.

Gladys probably went to work. She married young, a marriage that did not last. She remarried and stayed in Texas the rest of her life, and stayed close to their father, Allie Sheffield.

In these letters she was talking about their father, Allie, after he died. She asked Sister for help paying for his funeral and interment, because it would take her and her husband years to pay off that $250.

From Gladys’s letters I got the impression that Allie was a likable guy with a sense of humor, who was popular in his community, and he would be missed.

Sister had stayed in touch with him and Gladys after she left Texas and had gone back to visit them at least once.

She did help Gladys out with the bill. I found mortuary receipts.

Allie had lost a leg around 1920, and that was the reason the children were put into the home. He was no longer able to support a family of five with only one leg.

There was a picture of Allie with the letters, showing him full length, standing on his wooden leg, next to his pickup.

The wooden leg was a peg leg contraption unlike anything I have ever seen, a bracket strapped to his thigh, with a piece of wood coming down out of the bracket. The bottom piece was shaped down to a more slender end, and it might have had a metal cap.

That picture was a real find for me – after hearing about Daddy’s leg all those years, this was the first time I’d seen it, or seen my grandfather, for that matter.

When my father died in 1975, it hit me hard, so when Allie died sometime later, I expressed condolences to my mother.

She brushed them aside curtly: "I didn't know him."

In her late seventies my mother acquired a boyfriend, Armand. Apparently once when my mother was behaving badly - she was a world class complainer - Armand explained to some friends that she grew up in an orphanage and that was why she behaved that way.

That REALLY pissed her off. Later when she was complaining to me about Armand, she mentioned him saying that. Growing up in the home had not affected her like that, she said.

Hm. I could have sworn it had affected her exactly like that.

She once told me she had been a “happy go lucky” child.

Eh, maybe she did have a cheerful disposition until she married my father and had children, and then was dealing with her depression, and raising children, and my father's temper (he had a bad one, she said), and doing it all without medication or therapy, except for that once a week visit to Polly to get her hair done.

I have been much more fortunate in my life than my mother was. For one thing, I didn’t grow up in an orphanage, but also attitudes about women changed in the last few decades, and I have had the resources of therapy and antidepressants, and I have been willing to accept help.

In the 1950s, you toughed it out and sucked it up. Too bad for you and your children.

Anyway.

Here is the picture of Allie Sheffield and his truck. And his wooden leg. He died around 1977.

Sister died in 1987. Don’t know when Gladys died. Allen died of cancer in 1964, which was a relief for me. You figure it out.

Their youngest sister Genevieve died young. I don’t know how. No one ever spoke of Genevieve. Ever.

My mother was the last of the siblings to go, in March 2001 at the age of 86. Heart disease. I think it was eating at MacDonald’s every day with Armand that got her.

I have relatives in Texas, but I would have to do some serious genealogy searching to find them. I’ve made it so far without them and I’m willing to keep it that way.

As my cousin Nancy always said, “Family! the other F word.”

Life with birds

Sitting at my desk, I heard the sound of a bird flying into an office window. Darn it. It happens sometimes, but at least it didn't sound like it hit very hard. Took me another couple of minutes to realize the bird was in the room, and hit the window from this side.
There followed several minutes of closing blinds so it wouldn't try to fly through the windows again, and opening doors so it could fly through them. One door I opened let the cat in, and he took a great interest in our new house bird.
Poor birdie - it flew up on top of the laundry cabinets, then into and all around the living room with the cat bounding behind in hot pursuit, and me in pursuit of the cat. It perched on the arm of a couch and I almost picked it up but no, off it flew again.
Finally came back into the kitchen and perched up high on an open cabinet door over the stove, and next to the kitchen door where it probably came in. I had parted the bug curtains so that it could fly out easily, and I sat at the kitchen table saying, "You're almost there, you're almost there."
The cat walked by looking disgusted because he had lost the bird and did not look up to see it. Yay.
The bird was looking at the door with the bug curtains, and you could see it was thinking, thinking, thinking, and watching the birds flying around outside.
Finally it bucked up its courage, took off ... and flew into the top of the bug curtain, and spiraled down to the the top of the milk crate where I keep the dog towels.
"You're almost there!" I said again.
It sat there for another minute.
Then it hopped down to the threshhold of the door, sat there a second, and walked out.
Turned right, and that was the last we saw of it.
We being me and the dog.
I think it might have been a female house finch, but the beak didn't look right. Too pointy. Darn. I sit here poring over my bird book and still confuse purple finches with house finches.
But I do believe I saw a ruby crowned kinglet yesterday. First one this year!

Interesting Times

Remember that old Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”

The curse is working.

A lot of people are feeling despair over all that is happening – the pandemic and the pressure of being in isolation for so many weeks; the rise of white supremacist neo-Nazis; the murder (lynching) of black people by the police and any arrogant, frightened white person with a gun or whatever weapon is at hand, like a knee, truck, or rope, etc.; the clear not only lack of true leadership from our president but his more and more apparent separation from reality, most recently manifested in tear-gassing and firing rubber bullets into some peaceful protesters so that he could walk across the street and get a picture taken of himself in front of a church, holding up a Bible.

This was such a blatant display of hypocrisy I do not know why that poor abused Bible did not burst into flames. Heck, I don’t know why the guy himself doesn’t burst into flames.

Oh, if only physics had a conscience.

We were taught to love our country. We were told fine stories of great men who wrote and spoke glorious words, who said that all men are created equal.

I am going to repeat myself now, because I have said this in the past: We were not taught that “men” only meant white European men who owned property (some of which was slaves).

Not women, not people with brown or black or any color than white skin, certainly not our country’s indigenous peoples, some of whom owned slaves, and some of whom resent that black activists have not brought indigenous peoples along in their fight for equality.

This is more complex than you think.

Now we are seeing our beloved country getting its poxy white skin ripped right off, especially the skin of white policemen who feel they can kill/murder/lynch black people with impunity and get away with it because that is exactly what they have done for so long.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was tumultuous and entwined with the anti-Vietnam war movement. There were riots, assassinations (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, just for starters), war in the streets of Detroit in 1967, and a war in Chicago at the Democratic convention in 1968.

Hubert Humphrey was nominated there. He lost to Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, a smart guy who would have been a much better president if he had not been mentally unstable and had not resorted to criminal measures to get what he wanted. Oh, and he was a right-hand man to Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, chasing Commies, many of whom were not Commies.

Anyway, when the Black Panthers were making white people pee their pants (Black men! With rifles!) and the men of the Nation of Islam stood in long lines in their long black coats and hats, man, I’ll tell you, they were every bit as scary as the lines of bubble helmeted policemen with their kill clubs were then and are now.

After the passing of Civil Rights Acts in the sixties under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (a much despised president who also started Medicare and other social programs that latter day Republicans have been deconstructing as fast as they can), after police murdered black activists in the streets and asleep in their beds, after the Vietnam war was halted, after black actors began turning up in television commercials and shows, and blaxploitation movies became popular, after the advent of busing and affirmative action and college admissions quotas, there prevailed a false sense that racism was beginning to be a thing of the past - at least in the minds of some white people.

Non-white people have always known that was a lot of hooey. Racism only went into hiding for some people. It became visible with a vengeance during the Obama administration.

Black people have politely pointed out that lately we have become aware of the persistent and random killing of black people because people now have cell phone cameras and can make videos of white people murdering black people, as in the case of George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery.

Watching a person die while you hear his voice fade, or you see his body reel when the gun blast hits him, begins to make this centuries old practice of treating black people as animals to be hunted down and killed real, and repulsive, and impossible to ignore or dismiss, and maybe, just maybe, you begin to grasp why people say BLACK LIVES MATTER. Because in the entire history of the settled white European presence on this continent, black lives have not mattered.

Brown and Red lives have not done so well, either, but I have to stop now.