IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE - CHAPTER 4

  After moving to East Nashville I missed my mother terribly. I hardly ever got to see her because she was working so much. I saw her in the morning when I got up for school but I was usually in bed when she came home from work. One Saturday night I was really lonely and I felt an overwhelming need to be with her. I walked to Daniel-Hoppe Rexall drugstore on Gallatin road and used a pay phone to call a taxi. When the taxi arrived I told the driver to take me to our drugstore on Charlotte Avenue. I was very stubborn, some would say hardheaded and I still am. Once I make up my mind to do something I am hell bound to go through with it. Mother relished telling me the story about when she took me to see Dr. Koenig about my hearing. After the examination he told her "He's not hard of hearing he's hard headed".

 When I arrived at our store mother was shocked to see me. After I told her how I got there she was angry and told me that she was going to send me right back. She walked me out with her to pay the taxi driver and to tell him to take me back home. I was determined that I was not going back. I fooled her into believing that I was going to cooperate but as soon as she opened the door I ran away. Mother was screaming at me as I disappeared around the corner of the building. I ran south down 17th street to the alley at the rear of the store. I found a hiding place there until she sent two boys, who worked at the store, out to find me. They eventually talked me into coming back inside with them. When I got there the taxi was gone and I talked her into letting me stay with her until closing. She was angry with me but I guess she finally realized how determined I was to stay there.  As stubborn as I am I would have never done anything like that if my life had been normal. I have never regretted what I did that night because it would be the last real time of any consequence that I spent with my mother in the days before she died.

 Meanwhile, back on McKennie Avenue Didi was searching for me and had everyone else looking for me. Mother called to tell her what I had done and she was furious. Didi chewed me out over the phone but I didn't care because I was where I wanted to be and I was gladly willing to face her wrath when I got home. For years Didi would tell people at family gatherings after I was married that she came right down to that store and marched my butt back home. That was not true. Mother drove me home after closing the store for the night. When Didi told that story I would just grit my teeth and bear it. I never challenged her because I didn't want to embarrass her and it just wasn't worth the drama it would have caused. I would always make sure to tell people what really happened after she left. 

My grandparents house had seven rooms. Two bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, and a kitchen. On the back side of the house next to the kitchen was a small room where granddaddy had an easy chair and we called it the back room. Next to it was the bathroom and it had two doors. One opened into Aunt Arda's bedroom and one opened into the back room. There was also a hallway that connected the back room with the living room. A dial telephone sat on a small table in the hallway near the entrance to the cellar. As a child the cellar was always scary to me and I wouldn't go downstairs unless someone was with me. It had a dirt floor and in the winter there was always a pile of coal in the corner. A coal furnace sat at the foot of the stairs. Granddaddy followed a routine on cold winter mornings. He was the first out of bed and the first thing he would do was get the furnace fired up. It would be freezing in the house because the furnace would go out during the night. We would sleep under three or four quilts and be warm as toast but I hated getting out from under those quilts in the morning because the cold would hit you like a ton of bricks. Placing your bare feet on that ice cold wooden floor was no fun.

There was a front door which opened from the living room on to a large concrete front porch that circled around to the side of the house. I can't remember when this happened but one night Donna and her then boyfriend Larry were standing on the porch near aunt Arda's room. This side of the porch faced 12th Street and the back of Eastland Baptist church. Larry decided to leave for the night and drove away in his car. It was a warm night and Donna lingered awhile there on the porch. Suddenly a strange man walked up to her out of the shadows and she passed out from sheer terror. When she came to the man was standing over her but just then Larry drove up and the he ran off. Luckily, Donna had left her purse in his car and he was bringing it back to her. He helped her into the house but she was hysterical. The police were called and a report was taken but nothing ever came of it. The house was white clapboard on the outside and there was a fairly large front yard and back yard. At the end of the back yard was a barn that granddaddy built around 1960. It served as both his work shop and storage. He also used as a single car garage.

 As a family we spent our last Christmas together at my grandparents house. It was December 1962 and I can't remember anything about that Christmas except that it snowed 12 inches on Christmas Eve. I was delivering papers on West Greenwood Avenue that night. During that time my cousin Roy had a paper route. I was helping him deliver the afternoon newspaper which was called the Nashville Banner. When I reached my Uncle Doug's house near Hattie Cotton Elementary school I saw my mother standing just inside the front door of their living room. She waved at me as I walked by. There were a few inches of snow already on the ground and the flakes were huge and really coming down. Snow in Tennessee at Christmastime is very rare. There is a picture of my father that is possibly the best picture ever taken of him and as far as I know it was the last picture ever taken of him. It was Christmas day 1962 and he was wearing a hat and a trench coat. Daddy has a big smile on his face and looks perfectly normal. There is nothing in that picture that would betray the fact that daddy was a very sick man. In just about three weeks he would cause the death of my mother, his unborn baby and himself.