1,996 words
My parents had ten children. The children, in birth order, were Ruby, Mary Jane, Erma, John Jr., Phyllis, Robert, Eugene, Ruth, Harold, and Gerald. By the time my memories of my mother, Addie, begin, she was 44 years old. My earliest memory of my mother comes from the time my sister and I had the measles. That was the summer I turned three years old. Mom put us in a darkened room and gave us warm tea. She was there to meet our every need and to listen to our complaints. We felt miserable and made no secret about how we felt. She nursed us through the ordeal.
For our family, the depression was in full swing when I was born. We were dreadfully poor – almost the poorest of the poor. Dad worked hard when he could find work and he worked hard to find work when he did not have a job. The jobs were few and far between, even for a man, like my father, who had a good reputation, a reputation for working hard and for being honest. All of his jobs were those of the common laborer. These were jobs that required long hours of backbreaking labor. Many of them required that he live away from home since they were in the mountains west of Fort Collins. He dug ditches with a pick and shovel, stacked hay with a pitchfork, and cut timber with a crosscut saw.
My oldest sister, Ruby, was married. She and her husband, Ervine Stewart, lived in the same town, always a few blocks from where we lived. My oldest brother, Johnnie, who could seldom get along with authority figures, left home when he was about 15 years old. He roamed around the United States, working in carnivals and as a cook in ‘greasy spoon’ cafes. My younger brother, Jerry, who was to be the last of ten children, came along in 1935. That meant that seven of us were at home, since my second-oldest sister, Mary Jane, died several years before I was born. So, when I was young, there were nine people in a series of small houses. The houses never had enough bedrooms or beds which meant that we often slept several kids to a bed. Some of the houses did not have inside toilets; they had outside toilets (outhouses or privies, as they used to be called). None of the houses had central heating. Most did not have pre-heated hot water from a tank. We had to heat the water for cooking, doing dishes, bathing, washing clothes and for other uses on the wood and coal cook stove in the kitchen.
Mom did what she could to keep us fed. We had vegetable gardens during the summer and fall months. She canned fruits and vegetables for the winters. The food that she bought was simple and inexpensive. Essentially all of the food we ate was home prepared, including the home-canned food and the home-baked bread.
Mom also worked hard to entertain each of us when we were young. Later, we were expected to play outside. Unless the weather was really bad, playing outside was just what we wanted. We were robust (some might even say hyper-active, to use the modern idiom) kids, full of energy and mischief, even when we did not always have as much food as we might have liked or needed.
Evenings, we played outside until it grew dark. Then, we would play family games of the simplest types, or read, or (later, from about 1937 on) listen to the radio. The radio was an inexpensive Montgomery Ward console that my sister, Erma, bought for the family. Last I knew of it, my younger brother still had that old radio. That radio provided years of entertainment and education. For example, while listening to it, I learned to appreciate many different kinds of music, from western, through modern and jazz, to the full range to be found in the classical repertory. We listened to many different kinds of radio programs, from “The Lone Ranger” to “One Man’s Family.” We learned many things from the radio.
Throughout all of these years, I never came to know – or to appreciate – my Mom. Since Dad was away working much of the time, Mom had to fill the role of both parents, and do it all on a poor, working man’s wages. Fortunately, Dad was never much of drinker; he gave most of his wages to Mom, such as they were.
We moved often in the early years. In part this was because we were in rental housing and each of the houses – in succession and for a variety of reasons – was no longer available to us. In part, we moved from better to more marginal houses as Dad’s work either did or did not bring money in for rent, groceries, and the other household expenses. A couple of the houses were okay; most were little better than slums.
Mom worked hard, all day every day. She cooked and baked. She kept a clean house, even though some of the houses were marginal places in which to live. She washed clothes – using a washboard in the early years – and a series of ‘ringer washers’ in later years. She cared for each of us as she could. Some of the care for us younger children was provided by the older sisters; that is, before those older sisters left home for jobs or for marriage.
There was never enough money to meet even the most basic needs for food, clothing, fuel for the wood and coal stoves, rent and the other needs of the family. Fortunately, most of us were healthy most of the time. When one of us did get very sick, the doctor came to the house. This was also true when we were born. All of the 10 children were born at home, unthinkable just a few years later.
Mom and Dad got along most of the time, as far as I knew. I suspect part of that was because Dad worked long hours when he was working where he could spend the nights at home and because, frequently (particularly from about 1940 on), he worked away from home a good deal of the time. For example, when he worked on the mountain ditches, he was away in the spring. When he worked in the timber, he spent nearly the entire year in the mountains west of Fort Collins, coming home only for occasional weekends. Later, sometimes, Mom would join him for a day or two at one of the various cabins he lived in as part of his timber job benefits. When he stacked hay, his work was usually in the Laramie, Wyoming area or in North Park, Colorado.
For a time, he worked in Laramie on the construction of the huge cement plant that still stands south of Laramie and west of the Laramie/Fort Collins highway. On that job, for several months (maybe more than a year?), he wheeled wheelbarrows full of cement up long, steep ramps. The plant was built one wheelbarrow load of heavy, wet cement at a time. Not many men lasted very long on that job. Dad stuck it out until the construction was finished.
The thing that I never knew much of anything about was my Mom’s family. It is true that her sister, Bessie, lived in Fort Collins and we saw her from time-to-time. Mom’s only other sister, Carrie, lived in Fort Collins, usually briefly, on a couple of occasions. Carrie lived in Denver most of her later adult life. Since we were poor, we seldom got to see Carrie, except during her brief residencies in Fort Collins. That was when I first remember meeting Carrie’s daughter, Wilma Dean, and her son, Tom. My Aunt Carrie’s husband, H. B., died in the early 1940s. I have no clear memory of him.
Mom’s brother, Moody, lived in Denver. He would come up for brief visits, but only on very rare occasions. He and Dad did not get along. In fact, one of the reasons I knew so little about Mom’s family was because of Dad’s negative attitudes towards her family. That was unfortunate. Aunt Carrie, for example, was a wonderful, kind, and considerate woman. She was deeply religious and a humanitarian in the best, modest sense of that word.
Another of Mom’s brothers, Sellie, lived in Cleveland. He came out a couple of times when I was in junior high and high school. He was very short and a bit rotund. He had a lively mind and a pleasant personality. He gave us small presents and otherwise ‘endeared’ himself to us.
Mom’s mother died when Mom was eighteen. Mom was still living on the family farm near Hoxie, Kansas. A couple of years after her mother died, Mom came to Colorado to be with her married sister, Bessie. That is when she met Dad. It was probably in 1910 when she came to Colorado. They married in 1912. At that time, Mom was helping her sister with the work of a farm housewife. Dad was a hunter, trapper, wagon driver and broncobuster. He probably also helped his Dad on the Mansfield family ranch at Jelm, Wyoming.
Mom was the tenth of eleven children born to Sirena (sometimes spelled Cyrena) Norris and George Lewis McClure. Sirena was the thirteenth of fourteen children born to Samuel Norris and Rebecca Maddux Norris. Some of the Norris family, including the parents, Samuel and Rebecca, moved from Ohio to Iowa around 1866. In Iowa, Sirena met and married George. George was the older of two children born to Charles McClure and Rebecca Lusk McClure. George and his sister, Mary, were born in or near Oquawka, Illinois and grew up there.
According to some family oral history, George was a sometimes farmer and sometimes itinerant ‘preacher.’ He apparently spent a great deal of time away from his wife and the farmstead. But, obviously, with eleven children born into the marriage, he managed to spend time at the farmstead and in the marriage bed.
The eleven McClure children, in order of birth, were Frank, Charles, James, Moody, Andrew, Bessie, Carrie, Sellie, Frederick, my mother, Addie, and Eugene. Frank was a barber in the Allison, Nebraska area until his death in 1931. Bessie, Carrie, and Eugene married and had children. Moody and Sellie were bachelors. Frederick married but died young and without children. The life histories of Charles, James and Andrew are almost totally unknown.
It was the sorrows that Mom suffered, mostly because of the early death of two of her brothers and because she did not know what course the lives of three of her brothers were taking, that I knew nothing about when I was growing up. In fact, most of the details of the lives of five of her brothers were unknown to me until I began to do family history research in the 1980s. Two of her brothers, Frank and Frederick, died before my memories begin. Charles and Andrew seem to have ‘just disappeared’ from the family records. James, after many years of wondering, was found, quite by accident, by his sister, Carrie, who, along with her oldest son, Herman, looked after James until his death.
Mom suffered these tragedies, sorrows, and uncertainties in silence, at least in so far as I was concerned. The older children tell about the same story. Here she was: burdened by the trials of poverty, by the housework a large family demanded and by a husband who did not value her family. Through all of this, she cared for her husband, her children, her household, and herself. She maintained an external demeanor that was cheerful and pleasant. She generally had a good sense of humor. So, in all of this, she was “The Mother I Never Knew” – not really, not fully, and not with understanding or empathy!