Mother

My mother was many things to me. She was very protective of her daughters - all four of them. Diane was the fifth but had a different mother, so she was our step sister. Mother never worked at an outside job, but she had many jobs at home. She wanted us to be proper young ladies and Daddy wanted us to be tomboys so we were a little of both. She kept the house so very clean, and we all had chores to do too. She sewed most of our clothes and taught us how to sew and clean and cook.

She encouraged us to do something like piano, singing or dance. I took piano lessons for seven years. She drove us to town once and sometimes twice a week and waited on us to have the piano lessons. I did take voice but I don't sing real good. I did learn to play the piano pretty darn good and was entered in some college competitions at Florida Southern in Lakeland, FL.

Mother didn't love you up and hug you very much but she showed how much she loved us in other ways. We did get our share of spankings.  She dressed us up for church and for school. You wore hats and gloves and always dresses. You also wore dresses or skirts and blouses to school. Pants or shorts were not allowed. 

She cooked really good. We all sat down to supper every night around 5 oclock. We all had breakfast together around 5 am and we had lunch together on the weekends.

Mother thought we girls should marry someone rich so he could take care of us. She was always hard on us about who we dated. Having money didn't matter to me. The way the person acted was more important to me. It is hard to explain all mother was to me. I loved her and she loved me. She encouraged you to the best you could at what ever you were trying to learn. 

I loved to sew, and I loved to play the piano. With Daddy, I loved to plant gardens of vegetables, feed the cows and ride horses. I loved to fish and shoot guns. I once had a be be gun and loved running through the grove hunting birds. With Mother we waxed furniture, washed windows, woodwork inside and ironed clothes, did dishes and learned how to bake real good pies and cakes. 

She was soft spoken and always dressed nice. She liked to visit her lady friends and gossip. That got her in trouble sometimes. She loved to play bridge with the ladies and she was very good at it. She played bridge most of her adult life. Once every couple of weeks, once of month.  She belonged to the garden club and was good at arranging flowers. She was really good with math and could have worked but Daddy didn't want her to ever work. She worked in the yard and vegetable garden with Daddy, but she didn't help with the citrus groves. Sometimes we girls helped drive the tractor and lay watering pipes and pruned dead limbs off the trees to make extra money in the summer.

In the last couple of years of her life she had cancer. We took care of her at her house in Bartow. She showed so much courage and never cried or complained. We brought in a hospital bed so her friends could come by and visit. We hated the nursing home and brought her home to be in her own room. We sisters took turns helping take care of her.  Linda and John took her to the doctor and hospital a lot of the time. She seemed to grow sweeter the sicker she got, she wanted to be hugged and she was more loving during that time. She said life is really so short. 

She looked back on things and could remember all the things we did together. We went to the beach for a vacation every year. Either to Daytona Beach or New Smyrna. She looked back at all the big family get togethers at her house and how much fun we had in her swimming pool. All the times we water skied on the lake in Alturas and all the picnics we had and cook outs. We really had a nice life and pretty much everything we wanted. If Daddy and Mother couldn't get it for us, our granddaddy did. It didn't seem like we were spoiled, just well taken care of.  When you look at it that way, Mother loved us all pretty good. As we all grew older we realized her way was good. She was hard on our boyfriends and we had fights over that but after we got married everything was fine and we didn't ever fight again. 

We miss her and all the family get togethers for meals.  Those times were all centered around Mother and Daddy's house in Bartow. They had many church meetings there and just all kinds of things. There was a big porch and a pool. Daddy kept the yard looking really nice. Jerry, Connie's husband, helped Daddy in the yard. It always looked nice. We all miss those really good times.