Weird Families

My mom met my dad one summer while she was in Orange, visiting her aunt, my grandmother's sister. I've been told that my great-grandmother moaned that her daughters were killing her with their choice of husbands. My grandmother had eloped. Her sister Edna didn't do much better. She married the wastrel son of a farmer/rancher who lived down the road. My great uncle had run away from home at 14, vowing never to be like his family. He moved to Houston and worked at whatever jobs he could get, and at one point, he would later brag, went into a fancy restaurant and offered the servers a hefty tip if they would show him which utensils to use for what. He was one of the few men anybody knew about to make money during The Great Depression. Nobody ever asked how.

Anyway, their daughter and Mom were about the same age, and Mom was always ready to go to Orange, just to get away from the farm. One day, her uncle told her he had arranged a date for her with "Cap'n George's boy." Mom asked her cousin who this was. Lessie was somewhat dubious. He was extremely intelligent, a student at Rice (which turned Mom off immediately), but Captain George had a shipyard, so they had some money. Mom thought he was very skinny and incredibly shy and quiet, but after a couple of dates, she apparently changed her mind. Lessie says it wasn't love; it was the cartoon $$ signs chinging into her eyes. Whatever, They were married for over forty years before he died, and Mom was devastated.

I was much more influenced by the crazy matriarchy my mother was born into. My dad seemed to like it, too, at least, better than the merchant seamen he grew up around, who were always out fishing or hunting, and saw him as the black sheep for going to college.

Please accept my apology; I've been going through old photos all day. This board is one of the places I can come and just write when my head is full of this old stuff.

Ann

Fascinating, Ann!

alj wrote:

Lessie says it wasn't love; it was the cartoon $$ signs chinging into her eyes.

There are worse reasons to marry. $$ is probably one of the better ones, actually.

Dear Ann,
You always write with beauty from inside and out.
Love,
Betty

I think all families are weird. Sometimes children in families don't realize all that happens, either because they are busy with their own lives, or they are protected or stories aren't told. During the depression, my grandfather had a good job and my mother found a new house for the family. They all liked the house, bought it and moved in. Soon, a young man came to visit friends across the street and he and my mother fell in love. I have some wonderful pictures of this loving young couple. My mother always felt it was destiny that she found the ad for the house in the local paper. It was my childhood home and the young man was my father.

But they all carried burdens: my father whose grandmother had committed suicide forever affecting his mother, my other grandmother who had accidentally hit and killed a little boy after picking my mother up at school, and my grandfather who took the blame because his wife couldn't face what people would think. I loved all these people. They were my childhood family.

Carol

Well, ladies, I don't find any of that weird, at all!

One story, my great grandmother's mother left her husband for another man, got divorced and remarried. Back then, women seldom owned property, so when her 2nd husband left her a widow and left everything to his children, she was destitute and had to move in with her son. His dad was already living there, and they refused to speak to each other. (I can understand that)

They kept this up until 7 years later when one of them died! They never spoke in all that time. Their son carried messages back and forth. No wonder he never married!

Horrrible beyond belieif! It would be psychological abuse and yet leave no visible evidence.

I think women are winning the wierd contest here. Gotta win something!

Then there is all the weird stuff we aren't putting on this messageboard.

My kids would probably win the weird story contest. They bring out the weird family stories every time we get together.

And notice all our weird stories have men in them.

Carol

Of course there are men in the stories--without men there woulld not be women or anything else--what a bore life woudl be!

Brings to mind MEN.tal illness!