Saturday, February 03, 2007

Groundhog Day

My parents married on Groundhog Day, Feb. 2, 1934. They were both 17 years old--babies! They were married at the home of the Baptist preacher in Anson, Texas. And that is all I know about them--don't know how they met (they lived in the same rural area), what they thought of each other as they courted, and how dad popped the question. For for a do-over when I could ask these questions!

I do know that Mom had probably just returned from business school in Lubbock (her father came and got her, forcing her to quit because he found out that she was using some of the money he was sending her to take dance lessons). She may have married out of spite, to get away from home, or who knows? She and my dad were very different--she was the first to graduate from high school in her family; he quit school after 6th grade to work on the farm. She was an avid reader; she had to teach my father to read and write--seems he didn't learn much in school. She was a member of the church of Christ; he was a Primitive Baptist (and this caused discord between my mother and his mother all the days my grandmother lived). She was a spiffy dresser; he loved wearing overalls, etc., etc. I wish I knew all the story.

After marriage they lived in an area called "the shinnery" near Anson, Texas where my dad sharecropped during the week and worked sacking groceries at a market in town on the weekend. It was a hand-to-mouth existence at best, as the Depression wound down. My dad would later learn to be a carpenter at an army base during the War and go to be a trucker as well. Mom did not work until I was in Junior High when she went to work as a seamstress at Frank's in Hamlin. She later worked for the Malouf's as seamstress and bookkeeper putting her business school acumen to work.

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