The continuing memoirs of my great aunt, Susan Luella Donoho Stokes (1923-2013), written in 1992.

Part 2 here:
https://missmaisieandme.com/2020/07/15/aunt-susies-memoirs-part-2-childhood-and-the-great-depression-and-more/?fbclid=IwAR1Ogy-e-AgaPJzFuACh0t-lkCzxlPbYTW40JiESOGPeP-rdYNTdm9l41FQ

Part 1 (her marriage in the 1940s) here:
https://missmaisieandme.com/2020/07/15/my-great-aunt-susies-memoir-part-1/

Dad and I was sitting at the table and he was showing me how to put the date upon the letter. It was March 1928. I had gone to school about six months, but I had never written a letter before. I was five years and three months old then. I must have wrote ‘Dear Flossie, How are you? I am fine and hope you are the same.’ Forever after that, I thought that every letter should start out that way.

I remember after that, I had a dime. I don’t know where I got it but I must have got it while I was sick for kids just didn’t have money back then and I was wondering what I would buy with it. Myrtle begged me to buy a curling iron which I did and she used it on her hair. She was fifteen and I remember her holding the iron over the lamp chimney until it got hot and then curling her hair. I never remembered my hair being curled back then which it probably wasn’t. All the kid’s hair was worn about the same then, with bangs and just down below the ears and high in the back like a men’s hair is cut. Of course, my hair was blonde and straight as a pin. My hair was light-colored but not as blonde as Emogene’s. Kathleen’s hair was lighter than mine too but Dica had brown hair.

I don’t remember how long we lived at the Branch place. For a kid, time just goes along. Anyway, we moved to the Langford place where, if it is still standing which it isn’t, would be about a half a mile from where Myrtle and Earl live now. And it was here that we lived when Myrtle married Earl. She was sixteen and Dad was the preacher that married them.

I remember going to school one morning and grabbing up a bucket with a lid on it thinking that it was my lunch. We carried half gallon pails then and they were all alike. I remember tossing it around while I walked. At lunch time, I opened it and it was a bucket of eggs and not a one of them was broken. My teacher made all the kids divide their lunches with me and I had the best lunch I ever had in my life. For one thing, I had an apple and it tasted so good. We took biscuits and eggs or biscuits and jelly or jam that mother had made. So this was really a treat. I would have really like to have gotten the buckets mixed up again but never did.

Harvey* was dating Marie* and Roy* was dating Eunice* which they both married. But I remember the Sunday that they had them at our house. I can see them as if it were yesterday. Eunice wore her hair in three braided buns around her head and I thought her and Marie were both so pretty. Eunice never had her hair cut in her life. She is in her eighties now (this is 1992). Today we are good friends, but in those days, I would do things to pester her and I guess I wasn’t the sweetest little kid in the world. And if someone didn’t like for me to do something, that’s what I wanted to do.

(*Her older brother Harvey Donoho 1912-1989 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86044027/harvey-edward-donoho)

(*Marie Sands, sister to her sister Myrtle’s husband, Earl- 1911-1985 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86044106/ada-marie-donoho)

(*Eldest brother Roy Donoho 1902-1991 and his wife, Eunice Meador 1904-1999 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33664456/roy-e-donoho)

Flossie had married Don and brought him home from Jackson, Michigan to meet us. He had never been on a farm and he was in his teens. It was all new to him. I don’t know why but I was always afraid of him and if he wanted me to bring him a drink of water, I was always right there with it. He seemed to be always wanting someone to wait on him. He was just a teenager, I guess.

I remember the time all of us kids got an old gray horse and rode it to school. There was Irene Sands, she was sitting up by it’s ears, Mary Jane Hays who was six years old (the same age as I was) was next on it’s neck, then me and Mildred Hays, who was nine, Dica, who was also nine, Irma, twelve and Ruby Hays, fifteen, and there wasn’t any room for Sam*. He was about eleven. So he rode on its hoofs, holding onto its tail. I don’t know who the horse belonged to but now I feel sorry for it. We were having such good fun though. The road was muddy and I can still see us all. How Sam’s legs would go in when the horse took a step and back out again. The folks must not have known about us riding it for I can’t see them letting us. What kids won’t do!

(*my grandfather, Samuel M. Donoho 1918-1997 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87300987/samuel-medell-donoho)

This I almost forgot, it was Christmas, 1927. I was four years old, Dica was seven. Our sister Flossie was working at the shoe factory in Salem, Illinois. She bought Dica a big doll with real hair and Santa Claus brought me one with painted hair. I can barely remember this but I remember how mad I was. I got the scissors and cut all the hair off of Dica’s doll’s head. It looked awful, for it had been glued on and Dica, how much she cried! I don’t remember the spanking I must have gotten, but I do remember me never liking my doll.

Now it is 1930, Christmas again. This time I got four or five little china dolls, a little tea kettle and a wash pan. The last two things I have had for these 62 years. But the little dolls, I only kept them for two days. I had them all in a box, carrying them around and stubbed my toe on the door sill. The dolls went everywhere and broke everyone of their heads off. I was heart broken. As mother always said “Don’t get Susie to crying, for she don’t know when to stop.” and it didn’t seem like I could and I still feel sad when I think of this.

We moved to Alma, Illinois. This was in 1930 or 31 and Alma was our mailing address. As always, we lived in the country, about a half of a mile from Aunt Frona and Uncle Wall Thomas. We could see their house from ours. Aunt Frona’s mother and grandmother both lived with them. Us kids would call them Grandma Lid, (Aunt Frona’s mother and Aunt Molly, her grandmother) Grandma Lid was a big woman with a big voice and she didn’t like kids. Her mother was real small and I loved her.

My dad always chewed tobacco and when he would run out, he would say “Susie, run down and ask Lid for some tobacco.” for she chewed too. I sure didn’t like to go but it would have been out of the question for me to say no. I would go to their house and Uncle Wall, Grandma Lid and Aunt Molly would be sitting around a big wood burning stove in their living room. I was so shy I could hardly hold my head up but I would tell her that my dad had sent me to ask her for some tobacco. She would laugh loud and hike up her dress which was down to her shoe tops, then her underskirt and then her flannel bloomers. They were below her knees and had a pocket in them and that’s where she kept her ‘tobaccy.’ She would cut off a piece and give it to me. Then Aunt Frona would help me up into the attic over their kitchenn to get her some potatoes and onions they had stored there so she could cook them for dinner. Then I would take the tobacco home to my dad and while he was cutting a chunk of it off, I would tell him where Grandma Lid kept it, (hoping he would never send me again) and he would put the chaw in his mouth and wouldn’t say a word, but would throw back his head and laugh. I know now that he knew where she kept it.

Then once a month my dad and mother would go away for the weekend. To Church (Pleasant Grove, where we lived before we moved to Alma.) He was the minister there and was until he died. But this is getting ahead. Anyway, us kids would stay at home. Sam, 13, Dica, 11, me, 9, Emogene, 5, Kathleen, 3. We liked it fine and wasn’t afraid. Dica would cook on the wood-burning range annd I would help her with the dishes and Sam would take care of milking the cows and chopping the wood and feeding the chickens. And I remember gathering the eggs and carrying in the wood for the stove and Dica would make the beds and sweep the floors. It was so quiet and no one bothered us. In the winter time when we were alone, we would go out and get some snow and make snow ice cream. For which, if Mother was home she would never let us use the sugar. Which I can now say, I never had too much sweets when I was little and I seem to have a craving for them now.

Will continue part 4 tomorrow if I get more time!

My great aunt, Susan Luella Donoho Stokes (1923-2013) was my grandfather’s younger sister and the first person to ever hold me after I left the hospital when I was born.

I am typing everything as faithfully as I can, with no grammatical corrections.

This must have been written around the mid 1990s, as a few siblings, like my grandpa, were still living.

Her previous memoirs are here:

https://missmaisieandme.com/2020/07/15/my-great-aunt-susies-memoir-part-1/

Remembrances of the Past

by Susan Louella Stokes

I have tried looking and and this is the very first thing that I remembered. I was standing at a living room window looking out toward the barn and banging at it with a tin cup. It seemed dark, but there was a light that reflected on the window and I felt like this came from the kerosene lamp or from the pot bellied stove. But I knew I was waiting for my dad to come in with the a big bucket of milk for I knew he’d been milking the cow and as soon as he got into the door, I would get a cup of it. I couldn’t have been but three or four years old at the most. Now this house we lived in was a mile or a mile and a half down the road and around the corner from the house I was born in. My Uncle Sam and Aunt Lizzie* lived in that house and did for many years after. He was my dad’s brother and he out-lived all of a big family.

(*Samuel Isaac Donoho, her dad’s brother, for whom her brother Sam Sr. was named)

(*her first memory must have been 1926 or 1927)

The next thing I remember is looking around the yard for pennies and it seemed like I always could find them, they were Indian head pennies. If I found enough of them, my mom would let my two older sisters- which was Myrtle, who was ten years older than me, and Dica, who was three years older- take me to the little grocery store down the road. It set on a corner, there were other roads coming into it. But me being little, it seemed like it was kind of a long walk from our house.

Then there was a pond of water out by our barn, they always kept the wagons shoved in it all but the wagon tongue would be in the water. This day I remember, it was almost in it. Now this was a summer day and I must of been four years old, my mother and another lady was sitting in kitchen chairs close to the back door, talking and I was out walking up and down this wagon tongue and I fell into the water. I got up out of it and run to my mother crying, saying I was drowning. But I remember how my mother laughed and the woman that was with her did too. I have never remembered who that woman was.

Then next thing I remember is Myrtle telling me, Dica, and a little neighbor girl- Renee Branson was her name, she seemed to be a little older than me and I was still four- GHOST STORIES. She would tell us, Mary on the one step, Mary on the two step and now I am at your door, Mary. I loved it and I begged, “Maddel, tell me another” and then I realized that Maddel wasn’t her real name and I had been calling her that always so I started in repeating Myrtle over and over and never again did I call her Maddel.

Then I remember Aunt Frona* She was my Dad’s brother, Johnny’s wife. He had died during the First World War, not in the war, but while it was going on. She had married again to Wallace Thomas and I always called her Aunt Fronnie and him, Uncle Wall. This night they woke all of us up. She came running in to say she wanted to take Susie. She had been to the Salen reunion (that was the Soldiers and Sailors Reunion that they held every year for a week in Salem, Ill. and I guess they still do.) Anyway, she heard that my mother had died so she thought she would come and get me. Of course they all had a big laugh out of that.

(*https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87238522/john-amos-donoho he died during the Spanish Influenza Pandemic and his wife was pregnant at the time with their son, Harry Donoho. His wife “Fronnie” also contracted the disease, but survived and gave birth to their son. Frona was quite weak and had no milk. My great grandmother, Emma Daniels Donoho Beck breastfed both Harry and my grandfather, Samuel Sr. They were ‘milk twins’.

Now my Grandpa Donoho* lived with us, but all I can remember of him is the night that Jeff Dial (and it’s funny that I still remember his name) came to our house, he lived somewhere around in the country. He had a jug of whiskey and he was drunk. Him, my Grandpa, and Dad was sitting at the kitchen table and he was wanting them to drink with him. They wouldn’t and they were laughing. I could see the lamp light shining on the table. My mother was getting us kids out of the kitchen and to bed but I felt afraid. I don’t know why.

(*Eli Donoho https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86450461/eli-donoho 1857-1928)

The next thing I remember is the day my Grandpa died. I was in the kitchen with my little cousin, Lorene Peters. She must have been about two years old. She was standing on a chair at the water bucket, getting her drink out of a long handled dipper and there seemed to be a living room full of people and people in his bedroom too. I could hear their voices. And then they day of the funeral, I was sitting with Flossie* in the Church and a little later, I was standing at the open grave with her, holding her hand and looking up at her. I noticed the hat she was wearing. Now, I would say it was a flapper’s hat. That was in 1928. I was just 5 years old. I suppose that was a new hat.

(*her sister, Flossie Donoho Mains 1909-1998 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87300503/flossie-eathel_ellen-mains)

Years later, I was to see my Dad and my Mother buried in the same cemetery. Now all this was happening out of Kell, Illinois. Me being little, I didn’t know how many miles from there, but my mother always called it Hickory Hill. My dad was born and raised there and my mother was born and lived for two years in Arkansas before moving there. Then she married him, when she was fourteen and he was nineteen. His birthday was February 19th and hers was August 17th and they got married April 14, 1901.

Now, getting back to my life, my sister Emogene* was born and was three years younger than I was, but I didn’t remember her being born. She was the the thirteenth child they’d had. But I do remember Kathleen*. She was fourteenth and the last one to be born. That made eight girls and six boys. And they raised all of the girls, but just three of the boys. Here are my brothers annd sister’s births and deaths:

Roy Earl Donoho–Born, June 3, 1902–Died, January 16, 1991
Harriet Elizabeth Doolen–Born February 19, 1904–Died, December 29, 1985
Alta Ellen Renfro–Born December 31, 1905–Died April 15, 1987
Richard Eli Donoho–Born December 3, 1908– Died 1909
Flossie Eathel Mains–Born November 21, 1909–
Harvey Edward Donoho– Born February 10, 1912–Died February 15, 1989
Myrtle Idola Sands–Born May 9, 1914–Died November 5, 1994
Bedford Issaih Donoho–Born March 3, 1916- Died 1917
Samuel Medell Donnoho– Born August 14, 1918-
Dica Eunice Hartsock– Born November 18, 1920
James Curl Donoho– Born September 5, 1922- STILLBORN
Susan Luella Stokes– Born December 5, 1923-
Mary Emogene Harris Elwood– Born December 26, 1926
Rosa Kathleen Gonser– Born September 7, 1928


(*Mary Emogene Donoho-Harris 1926-1998 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87301255/mary-emogene-harris)

(*Kathleen Rose Donoho-Gonser 1928-2003 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87301473/kathaleen-rose-gosner)

Now, back to the house we lived in, Emogene was born there and so was Kathleen and as I said, I remember the day Kathleen was born. I woke up, I was lying on the bed and they told me I had a little sister. Later, I remember us kids finding Indian head pennies in the yard and going to the store for candy.

Then we made a move. It was five miles from Salem, Illinois. I remember this house because of the honeysuckle around the house. There was always bees and I was always barefooted, it being summertime, and I was always stepping on them.

This was also the time that I stuck my finger in the butter. My mother would churn in a big wooden churn that set on the floor with a big wooden paddle in it. This day she had just taken the butter out into a bowl, when I came by and stuck my finger in it. My mother calmly said, “When I get through with this butter, I’m going to whip you.” I remember thinking, ‘she won’t, she will forget all about it’ and I run outside. I can remember it as if it was yesterday-playing in the yard and it seemed like hours to me, but I hadn’t forgot what she had said. I thought she had though and when I went back in, she grabbed me and spanked me and that was something for me for I never remembered my mother spanking me until then. I know that she would get mad at me if I was near her when she was sewing, she would tap me on the head with her thimble, and that would hurt. I would try to keep out of her way when she had that thimble on.

I also remember my dad giving me the one whipping in my lifetime that I ever got from him and it was at this same house. I was five years old and I was stubborn, very stubborn. I had got mad at something or other and it was supper time and at our house at meal time, we children sat down on wooden benches on each side of a big long table. My mother would sit at the end of it and my dad at the head of it and he would be the last to sit down and then he would “return thanks”. (as my folks always called giving the blessing) So this evening I wasn’t at the table and my dad said “Susie, aren’t you coming to the table?” I said “No, I wasn’t.” and he said “Yes, you are. I’m coming with the razor strop.” and he did and after he whipped me I was happy to go to the table. I was always scared after that. The razor strop always hung on the kitchen wall. My dad always used it to sharpen his razor blade before he shaved but after that, I knew what it was really for and he never had to use it again on me.

I also remember stepping on a rusty wire in the yard, that same summer and it going all the way through my big toe. I could see it coming out on top and I pulled it out for I felt like someone else pulling it would hurt worse than doing it myself and was I ever slick with that! I remember laying around on a pallet on the floor. A pallet was quilt folded on the floor and us kids would sleep like that through the summer months.

I always did my own tooth pulling too. When a tooth got loose, I would go back and forth with it until it would finally give up and come out. I was scared to death that my parents would tie a string around it and tie it to the door knob or pull it with the wire pliers like they did my other sister’s and brother’s teeth.

I started to school while we lived in that house. The school was on the same side of the road that our house was and maybe a mile down the road. I remember my teacher’s name being Margeret Wyman. She was a big fat woman and I was scared to death of her. This was a one room school with two toilets, one for girls and one for boys outside and a good long way from the school. And there was from the first grade to the eighth grade in one room and on this first day the teacher had the first grade class at the blackboard writing something and I was one of them and I had to go to the bathroom. If I had of been at my desk, I knew I was to raise my hand and sh would ask me what I wanted but standing up in front of the classes, I didn’t know what to do and I was afraid of her and I couldn’t hold another minute and I think that was LIFE’S MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT for me for I did go, all down my legs. The teacher brought me a mop and bucket and I had to mop it up, besides wearing my wet panties for the rest of the day after Dica wrung them out. I don’t remember my mother getting mad about her keeping me there and making me scrub the floor but the other mothers got mad about it.

The same teacher was the only teacher I had or every had to give me a whipping. This was later in the year and this day I was sitting in a seat with Dica. She was eight and I was five at the time. And Dica was wanting me to read like she was doing and I was wanting to get my crayons out of my desk and color pictures. When she wouldn’t let me, I pinched her as hard as I could on her hand and she started crying. The teacher said “What’s the matter, Dica?” and I was whispering “Don’t tell her, Dica.” And the teacher was coming down my side of the aisle with a yardstick in her had. She looked as big as a mountain. Dica said, “Susie pinched me” and at that time, I knew that I’d had it and I did, for she grabbed me and really let me have it with the yardstick across my bare legs. But she didn’t stop with me, she grabbed Dica and done for her the same way and sent us both to stand in front of the whole school and have them look at us. The only thing I was pleased about then, that I’m not today, was that Dica had to go up there with me. But I thought, she shouldn’t have told. I know now I was the wrong one.

Then my moved to a house about a mile or so down the road from where we did live. We called it the John Branch Place. It was there I got so sick. The Dr. said I had appendicitis. I don’t know to this day if I had it or not but I do know I was awfully sick. I remember one night I was in bed in the bedroom, I was on a cot and Kathleen or Emogene was asleep at one end of it and I was at the other and everyone else was in the kitchen. The lamp was shining into my room and I saw a tiny little man. He looked like he was wooden. His face was flat and I could hear him walking. He was about two feet tall. He walked up to the bed and laid his hand right down by mine. I was so scared, my heart was pounding so hard. He stood there for the longest time and then I don’t know what happened to him. My folks told me I had been asleep and dreamed him but to this day it doesn’t seem like I was asleep. That was over 62 years ago and I can still close my eyes and see him. Nowadays, we would think it was a little green man from Mars.

The next thing I remember is my dad was helping write a letter to my sister Flossie. She must have been in Michigan then for I know it must have been before she was married.

KEEP LOOKING FOR UPDATES- TO BE CONTINUED! MY EYES AND FINGERS ARE KILLING ME RIGHT NOW.

These were written some years ago by my grandfather’s sister, Susan Luella Donoho Stokes (1923-2013) some years ago. A dear family member, the little girl in the story named Ann, dropped these off today and I am transcribing them so that she is never forgotten- and to share with other family members, past and future. I am typing them exactly as originally written.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/138443688/susan-luella-stokes

REMEMBRANCES FROM THE PAST

1947

When I, Susan Luella Donoho, was 23 yrs. old, I was working at Auto Specialties Corp. And I had for about a year, when I met, Bob Stokes.
He had got him a job there too and he said his name was was Robert A. Stokes. But I could call him anything I wanted to, Robert, Bob, or Bub. And I said all right Bob. And months later when I started going out with him he told me he had hired in under his brother’s name and showed his birth certificate, his brother was two years older than he was and was in his last year of highschool. He said he haad a Mom, Dad, two brothers, and a sister at home in Arkansas.

He didn’t have a car but that didn’t stop us. We either rode the bus or a cab or walked home from a movie in town. I lived in a project house with my sister, Ellen, her husband and family. Which consisted of her son Charles, his wife Betty, And another boy Gene, and his three younger sisters. Bob stayed with his Aunt Agnes and his Uncle Dick and little boy Jimmy, they lived in the trailer park very close to where I was living. We kept going together, we would go to the movies, Silver Beach, or roller skating. Then it was February of 1948, I was still working at A.S. Corp. But Bob had quit and got him a job at Industrial Rubber. Just a little ways down the road from me. He had his application in aat Whirlpool and they called and he went. He worked there about 23 years and had to have a heart operation and never got to go back to Whirlpool or his president’s job in the Union. Which he had been voted for and accepted at Whirlpool. I am ahead of my story now and I’ll go back to 1948. We decided to get married on June 26th. And I was working the midnight shift, after I got up that morning Bob and I borrowed my brother Sam’s car and went down to Indiana and got our blood tests and came back this way to Roseland, Ind. The preacher and his wife had a little round building in their yard that they married us in. It was cute, jst the four of us there. Then Bob and I came back and gave Sam his Car. He called his mother and told her. I know now that must have been a blow. But we neither one thought anything about that. We didn’t have anywhere to live for Bob had a sleeping room with another man and we stayed there the first night. The man didnt come home till the next morning and I couldnt get up for I was in my slip for he sit there forever for so long talking. I don’t know how I did get up and go down the hall and go to the bathroom but he m ust have left. The next night we stayed at the Mary’s Hotel in Benton Harbor. And then the third night we went back to my sister Ellen’s and stayed the night. The next morning Charley her husband found us a sleeping room down by the Grocery Store where they did their shopping. I was on vacation so I intended to find us an apartment for we were burning up in the sleeping room. It was upstairs with no fan or anything to keep us cool and this was hot summer time. I would get the newspaper in the afternoon and I study it, then I came across a furnished apt. in Euclid Center, at that time it was called. Now it would be called Benton Hights. I went to see it, it was up an outside stair on the second floor. I rented it. It was three rooms and a bath with an ice box which was really an ice box, a man would deliver ice every day and i would have to remember to empty the pan every day and sometimes didn’t and i would have to mop up the water, Bob and I have to walk about half a mile to catch the bus to go to work. We still didn’t have a car and then he bought the car from Sam (the one we went to get married in), I don’t know what year the car was, but it had a very small window in the back and boy was we ever proud of it. We never had to catch another bus. Then we moved back to town, another upstairs furnished apt. two big rooms and a couch that made into a bed. In the kitchen everything was white except the floor. It was painted black. I would wax that and it would shine. I was so proud of it. But we had to share the bath with the couple who who lived across the hall. A we always had to remember to lock the door when we left the bathroom. Then came xmas time and we were going home. I was at least going to meet my new father and mother in law. I had been writing to her for about six months and was anxious to meet her. She was sending me recipes that I would ask for that Bob would tell me he liked. Chess pie, chocolate gravey, and how she made biscuits, and I always made breakfast for us before going to work, so she would send anything we would ask for, though she would never measure things, it would be a smidge of this and a dab of that and something else. But I was doing pretty good with the biscuits and gravey. And here’s the chocolate gravy I made it was sometimes good and sometimes not so good. BUt my kids and my grandkids always liked it.

You mix cocoa sugar and four with water and boil it for aa while, remove from heat, stir vanilla into it and put a big hunk of butter on your plate and pour over it. And then sop it up with your biscuits and this was delicious but oh so fattening.

Do you remember eating it Ann? But that was one thing that I cooked that I never measured. And I remember how Cindy and her kids would get after eating it when they were little. I would have to give each and every one aa baath after breakfaast. But I never minded that for I would rather see aa clean little kid then a dirty one.

We were off for xmas so we started down to Arkansas and stopped at my Mother and stepdad’s, and Bob met them for the first time then we went on to Missouri and stopped at his Aunt Margaret and Uncle Burls. And spent the rest of the night. Aunt Margaret was Bobs moms only sister and I liked her and though she had a beautiful house, her boy Bob was there from St. Louis Mo. and the next morning I met all of them. Sue Ann Aunt Margaret’s daughter was there too, she was a teenager. We all got busy after breakfast doing things for they were all going to Arkansas with me. That was all but Bob’s wife Margaret was busy, She was doing nothing in the livingroom but talking. Aunt Margaret had put me to drying dishes, for Uncle Burl was washing them. Sue Ann was straightening the house and making beds, and Aunt Margaret was packing the things she was taking with us for they were all coming with us to Mom and Pop’s. So at last we got there and Mom and Pop came out and welcomed us and took us inside and I will never forget how her table looked. It had everything imaginable on it, meats, vegetables, and every sweet you could think of. We would all get us a plate and eat when we wanted to, and never did i feel strange and that night after going to bed mom came to our bed and hugged and kissed us. And I loved her with all my heart. And though I had liked Aunt Margaret I was happy that Mattie was my mother in law.

She knew how to be a good mother in law and she was the best. Bob and I were married almost 25 years and I never ever felt anything but love for her. And I miss her very much to this day. There are times I very much would like to see and talk to her. But I know she wasnt really haappy after Pop died.

He died in 1973, and she died in 1977.

When we came back to Michigan after Xmas we were loaded. we had cans of everything, even sausages, potatoes and ham. We would go down twice a year, vacation and xmas. I would always have the car packed and ready to go when he would get home from work. And I just couldn’t hardy wait.

And then in February of 1949 I got pregnant with Cindy. And we moved upstairs in Ellen’s house. I don’t know what we would have done if we ever lived on a lower floor. I was just rooms upstairs. We had to go downstairs to use the bath. and I had an oil stove to cook on just like your mother haad in Ark. Bob bought me a new bedroom set and a new bedroom set and aa new chair and I didn’t care about not having running water upstairs, I was happy and I just made do. Bob was working at night 3:30 til 12:00 and this night was a thursdaay night just two weeks before I expected the baby. I had gone to bed about 10:00 and I started having pains and I didnt want the baby to come then for the next eve. they were having a shower for me. When Bob came up the stairs about 12:00 I was about ready to scream so he put me in the car and we went to (Charles Renfro’s) Ellen’s boy and picked up his wife – Betty she wanted to go. We went on to the hospital and three minutes to 9 that friday morning Nov 11 1949 I had Cynthia Ann Stokes and we called her Cindy. After about a week we came home and I will always remember you, Ann, and your mother coming out the door to greet us. You would be seven years old on the 23rd of that month and then you two went home and your mom baked and iced me one of her famous cakes and sent it to me for my birthday. For I had told her I never had a cake on my birthday.