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| Excerpt From The Family Memoirs
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Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? James 2:15-16
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The great difficulty of recording the lives of your loved ones is that whatever is written has to be relatively accurate, worthwhile, and not embarrassing to them. No easy task.
For instance, I could write my Dad was self-educated, he only had a 2nd grade education, and could barely write his name. He wouldn’t go for me revealing this if he were alive, but the amazing thing was that he was as skilled in math as any college professor I’ve ever known.
Mom was a motivator and a great believer in education. To her, education was an open door to a better life.
Plain and simple, Mom had one rule: her children didn’t stay out of school to harvest crops. We had plenty of drama around this issue.
Mom was one tough 98 pound woman. She didn’t take a back seat to Dad or anyone for that matter. In a sense, we never doubted who was running the show;she never knew fear of any kind as far as I know.
This may sound a little like grandiose worship, but not so. Her children were the most important aspect of her life.
One incident especially sticks out in my mind on how feisty she was about her brood.
As a the rule with most tenant farmers, the landlord called the shots concerning how and when the crops were harvested. The tenant's children did the harvesting, so they couldn’t start school at the end of the summer if their job was not done.
Mom would have none of this. We started school at the appropriate time.
In fact, I was witness to one particular encounter. Our porch was open and had a sink in it for cleaning vegetables and other things before being taken into the house.
Mom was standing at the sink when "Mr. Landlord" arrived. She and Dad had apparently already discussed it and Dad was delegated to share the news that we were going to school.
I heard the landlord say something like, “Raz, the crops aren’t in yet.” I don’t know what Dad, said, but Mom walked out the door and stood right beside him. I think thelandlord and Dad were scared of Mom because there was no argument. We started school the next day with all the other kids. We moved often. JA
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