The City Relations

I was raised in the country and it didn't matter if we lived on an acre or ten, my parents always managed to make that land a 'farm'. From the ages of about five until I was fourteen, we had a milk cow and calves, chickens, pigs, a horse and we always had a garden. My brothers and I worked and played in the dirt and our favorite place to be was always outside. (It was also Momma's favorite place for us to be!) We caught crawdads & minnows in ditches, dug up earth worms and fished in ponds and rice field canals. We climbed trees, made forts, played cowboys and Indians, hunted rabbits at night, rode our bicycles, played football, fought each other, defended each other, got dirty and were healthy and happy. Most of the time we ate very good, even if it wasn't always food we wanted to eat. We had our own fresh milk and vegetables, as well as butchering our own pigs and chickens and sending our calves to the locker. 
We also worked, and we worked hard. 
My first brother, the one born two years after me, and I milked the cow, fed the animals, worked the garden and helped Momma. He was Momma's 'Worker Child'. My second brother, born about five years after me, worked some, but mostly he worked hard at trying to look like he was working hard when in fact he wasn't doing much of anything but providing us with comic relief.  Number 2 brother was always Momma's 'Beautiful Clown Child'. My third brother was born when I was almost eleven and he never did too much of anything except argue. He was Momma's 'Smart Child'. As far as I know, I have never been anything other than 'The Girl', and have never been anyone's favorite anything until I met my husband and became his favorite wife, and had my kids and became their mom.
Anyway, my brothers and I worked and played, got dirty and went barefoot a lot. We also spoke 'country', like our Daddy, where a 'tire' was a 'tar', a 'wrench' was a 'ranch', and we were always 'fixin' ta do sump 'um'. 
Because of this, our 'city cousins' and their 'city mother', our Momma's older sister who was raised in the same Big Thicket house as our Mother and by the same country parents as she, felt sorry for us countrified heathens and would invite us to 'visit' them in Houston every summer. Only later, when I grew older, did I realize that they thought our Daddy was a mean hard drinking, hell-raising man who worked us kids near to death and they felt it their Christian duty to offer us relief and 'culture' from his heavy hand. Had I known this then, I would have given them hell, but I didn't. Fact was, I viewed these week long summer or spring break 'vacations' with both excitement (for the first day) and homesick anger (every day after). 
On March 10th, 1970 I was in first grade and six years old. I went to school that morning everything was normal, but when the school bus dropped me off that afternoon, I saw that my aunt and her oldest daughter were there waiting for me. I was happy to see them, but knew something wasn't right because they said they were taking my brother next to me and myself back to their house for a few days. I reminded them that I had to go to school, but they said it was okay and we were having a little vacation. I didn't want to go. Something was very wrong, but I had no choice and my brother and I climbed in the back seat and away we went. Just outside of Splendora I HAD to know what was going on because I had a really sick feeling and I was scared. From the front seat my aunt told me that my Nanny (My Daddy's mother, my grandmother) had gone up to Heaven to live with Jesus. I was smart enough to know that this meant that she had died and I was never going to see her on this earth again and I quietly cried, "No!" My aunt told me that Jesus wanted her with Him now and she would be happy and well and I shouldn't be sad for her. Well, I WAS sad and I was MAD! I didn't care what Jesus wanted. I wanted my Nanny on earth with ME! When I started to cry, my aunt ordered me not to cry and not to be sad, but I was a rebel even then. I did cry and I was sad. In fact, I'm STILL sad! I was not allowed to see my Nanny for the last time. I was not allowed to tell her 'goodbye', not allowed to grieve as I should have been. But that wasn't my aunt's fault and I've never held this against her. She was just doing what her baby sister asked of her...take up the slack, watch the kids for a few days, give Momma a break. It became sort of a habit after that and until I was about 13. 

My Aunt and Uncle lived in a nice brick house on a tree covered lot in Northeast Houston and off of Mesa Drive, back when that part of Houston was nice. Back in the 70's, the pace was slow and the neighborhood was safe. I could ride my cousins 10 speed bike all over the neighborhood without fear of anyone kidnapping me and I did love that. They also had an ice cream truck that came around every day, something we never had in the country. Sometimes they would take us to the Galleria shopping, or to the Budweiser Brewery and bird park. Other times we would pile into my male cousin's car and go cruising the streets of downtown Houston after dark. Now THAT was a Lesson for this 'country bumpkin' for sure! I saw my first 'cross dresser' when I was about ten years old and I was shocked as any ten year old might be! I also learned what 'street walkers' were and on what streets in Houston that they could be found. Only later would I stop and wonder why it was that my straight laced, refined and ultra United Pentecostal cousins would know these things, even know these streets??? As I look back now, it all makes perfect sense because my male cousin remains a perverted jackass and it didn't 'just' start when he got married the first time!
My aunt was married to a man who worked for a refinery in Pasadena. They had one son and three daughters, the son being somewhere in the middle, truth is, I really can't remember their birth order except for the baby. Their kids were older than I, the youngest about six years.
The son would begin molesting me when I was six, but never did he so much as touch me when I was at his home in Houston. I guess that was sacred ground for him. He preferred molesting me when his family would visit at my own home or at my grandparents house and the last time was at his and his new wife's home, but never at his parent's home. The girls were high strung, haughty and spoiled rotten, and I have never known any three females lazier than those three when they lived at their parent's house!
Since I was always busy doing something, I would arrive at their house and start cleaning. Not only did the place need it, but cleaning kept me occupied and there really wasn't anything else to do there. They had no television, for they felt that television was a sin apparently worse than anything else, including riding around at night looking at cross dressers and prostitutes. I would play with their Barbie dolls and then look through their tons of fashion and bridal magazines to the point where my eyes would cross. Later, I'd sit and stare at the piles of unfolded clothes, dirty dishes lining the kitchen counters and table, mold growing in the bathrooms and mirrors so filthy I could barely make out my own image and I decided to get busy! 
Even then I wondered how on earth a mother and a daddy could live in a house that dirty and unkempt with three able-bodied pre-teen and teenaged girls and one teenaged boy running around? Not only were they lazy, they were disrespectful and I can't even recall the number of times I would go hide in the corner of their bedroom and cry when they got into their screaming matches with my aunt and uncle! It often sounded a lot like the primate exhibit at Houston Zoo during feeding time. What was worse were the evenings when my aunt and uncle would get into those screaming matches! I don't know how many nights I went to bed in tears and begging God to PLEASE let me go HOME! I even had songs that I would sing in my head..."I'm Five Hundred Miles Away from Home", "Oh, how I want to go home..." I wanted my Momma and my Daddy!!!
Of course, there was the church...and if anyone ever had 'churchitis', it was my aunt and uncle! 
Because we were heathen children being raised Assembly of God, my aunt felt it her God-given duty to brainwash us with 'the TRUTH' of 'Oneness'. Forget that I had gone to church with my United Pentecostal Nanny every Sunday she had me and up until she died in 1970. Forget that I had asked Jesus into my heart when I was five and still couldn't read. And forget the fact that I had been baptized In the Name of the Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost when I was about eight. I was still a lost heathen in their eyes and I had to be 'fixed'. So, they'd drag me to church,and I do mean drag because I simply didn't like going to church, period. They'd dress me in their fancy clothes that were always too old for me...I was tall and they were short, so at ten I could fit into clothes and shoes they were wearing at sixteen and twenty. We'd head to church and be introduced as 'our cousins from the country', and the people would look at us with  pity as if we were the two headed cousins from a carnival freak show.  Sometimes it was fun...the music in a UPC church is ALWAYS wonderful! But sometimes it was 'strange', like when people would be running up and down the aisles screaming their lungs out and running into things, sometimes coming close to knocking themselves out. THAT scared me and made me VERY uncomfortable. I just never could understand why the Spirit of God would cause someone to harm themselves? But, at one point, I did feel God and I was baptized In the Name of Jesus as per UPC belief. I remember praying and saying to God, "I don't know if this is right or not, but I want to be sure and you understand." I know in my heart that God always has, but Momma was a different story!
When my aunt proudly told mother that I had been baptized Oneness, you would have thought that my aunt had said that I had been infilled with a demonic spirit!!! I can still vividly recall the fury in my Mother's beautiful green eyes that day! We're not Catholic, but it is with little wonder that she didn't call a priest to perform an exorcism on me. I'm pretty certain she wanted to murder my aunt, though! I think Mother was furious at her for several years after! As for me? I was okay with it because I felt that God was okay with it, and after all, He is the only one that mattered.
As big as my Aunt has always been in the United Pentecostal Church, she was even bigger in hair. Back in the 60's and 70's, women with big hair was the 'thing' in the UPC church. By 'big hair' I mean the tall bee-hive hair-dos, complete with 'rats', teasings and Aqua Net shellacs. My aunt was superb in this art and many women in her church came to her weekly to get their hair done. In turn, one of the ladies would do her hair, so that all the ladies would look nice Sunday morning. It didn't matter if they got their hair done on Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday, the teasing & Aqua Net would keep it looking as good as 'just done' on Sunday mornings. The ladies would sleep in hair nets and scarves to keep their 'do' fresh and with a minimal of poking and spraying the next morning, the hair remained in tact and as big as ever.
My aunt always drove her kids to school and there were a few times when my city cousins would have school and my country brother and I did not. I still remember vividly this one particular morning...My aunt, who apparently did not sleep in nightgowns and preferred sleeping in her underwear and a slip, pulled on a thin ratty button front house 'coat' and slipped on her ratty looking house slippers, grabbed her purse and out the door we went to take my cousins to school. I was appalled! My mother NEVER left out house without being fully dressed and here my aunt was, driving several miles to take my cousins to school IN HOUSTON and in her slip and see through house coat!!! But my horror was not complete because after we dropped the cousins off at school, my aunt stopped at Merland's grocery store and GOT OUT! I was shocked! I couldn't believe it! But, she got out and ordered me to follow and inside that store we went; not a hair on that UPC up-do out of place, her slip a good two inches longer than her see through house coat and those ratty house slippers slapping the tile in Merland's grocery store as she marched us to the lunch meat section, then the cheese, then the chip section, then the bread section and finally to the check-out where she talked to people as if she had clothes on! I was MORTIFIED! When I got back to my Momma, I told her about this in whispers and she shook her head, inhaled slowly and deeply and kind of made a groaning sound. Some time later Mother took us to visit one of her oldest friends in Thicket. The friend wasn't dressed and had on her nightgown and house shoes. It came time for lunch and the friend said she was going to run down to the store for lunch stuff. Mother asked, "Aren't you going to get dressed?" The friend, who also had the same name as Momma's sister, my city aunt, laughed and said, "Why? I'm just going to the store. I go like this every day." Mother looked at me and I looked back and we both shook our heads. Later Momma would say that some people just had no decency!
As for the hair, though, it played a big part in my aunt's life for years to come. There was this man in the church who loved hair and he started helping my aunt. As she got older, she started sending him her 'customers' and he ended up being the only one who did my aunt's hair. Well, one week he kept putting her off and he did this through Saturday, promising to be at her house first thing Sunday morning. For what ever reason, that particular Sunday was a big day at church and my aunt was getting pretty nervous about her hair. Sunday morning the man did not show and when she tried to call him, his mother said that he was asleep. Well, my aunt grabbed my Uncle's belt and drove herself, I'm sure in slip, housecoat and slippers, straight to the man's house. His mother opened the door and my aunt marched right past her, went straight to the man's bedroom, walked in, flipped on the light and proceeded to give that man the whipping of his life! When she had exhausted herself, she marched out of the house and past the man's protesting mother, drove herself home, fixed her own hair and went to church! 
No man comes between a woman and her hair!
My aunt did not cook often, and with good reason. She was NOT a good cook, at least compared to my momma she wasn't! Now, she had freezers filled with food, but I would guess that 99% of all that food was freezer burned, or at least it tasted like it was. She had a pantry full of canned goods, but she never used any of them, and her refrigerator was filled to the brim with food, but most of what was in there had things growing on it. She was a food hoarder, no matter if the food was edible (it usually wasn't) or should have been thrown away years earlier (It should have been). However, in spite of her not cooking regularly, her kitchen was always filthy and even though she had a dishwasher, her sinks were always filled with dirty dishes and there wasn't an inch of counter space that didn't have dirty dishes cluttered around. When we were at my aunt's, we ate a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a lot of hamburgers and a lot of Shipley's Donuts. She did have Chex cereal, though. About the only meal she 'cooked' regularly as far as I can remember. 
Most times when we arrived at my aunt's house, the only place to sit was on the clothes baskets. After I started folding clothes, like I did at home, I would discover the clothes baskets was actually a couple of sofas. 
And books? Lord have mercy, but my aunt had the books! Mostly Harlequin Romances, but later she'd graduate up to the Zebra Romances, also known as soft porn with a romantic undercurrent. Like my grandmother before her, my aunt was an avid and obsessive reader. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, was more important than reading those romance books. Well, except for church and hair and the mail. 
Mail, you might ask? Well, now, that was a stealthy event! My aunt taught her daughters, and then me, to listen for the closing of the metal mail box attached to the wall next to the front door. As soon as we heard that slap of metal, we had to sneak out, retrieve the mail and hide it on our person until we could get back inside the house and then we had to slip it under a sofa cushion, under the sofa, or anywhere that my uncle would not be able to see or find it. Later, she would retrieve it, go through it, sort it and give him what she wanted him to have. The biggest fights I ever witnessed was when my uncle retrieved or found the mail before she had sorted it! For years I didn't understand, but as my reading improved I would often see envelopes from the finer stores and later I would realize that these were bills for charge cards. I then understood why my cousins always dressed so well and why they gave me clothes finer than anything my parent's could ever afford. But even before I understood what was going on, it bothered me. My parents did not have to hide the mail from each other and I had learned at an early age that hiding things was a sign that what you were doing was wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my aunt and I dearly loved my three girl cousins. They taught me a lot and showed me some wonderful, interesting and fun things. From them I gained my love of shoes and an appreciation for the finer things of life, even though those things rarely fit into who I am now or the lifestyle that I prefer. I still appreciate them and I thank my cousins for that. 
But as 'countrified' as I was, I wasn't dumb or underprivileged as they believed, and still believe today. My Daddy has never been a hard-drinking or physically abusive man, nor was my Momma physically abused and a poor, little victim. Through all their faults, my parents were good parents who taught us right from wrong without having to play duplicitous games or put on 'airs'. Daddy worked hard and so did Momma. Momma's house was not always clean, but that woman cooked some mighty good food and she did things with us kids that were far more important than anything anyone could ever put on a charge card. My parents took us on trips, camped out with us, showed us how to make a fire and how to hunt, fish and clean our harvests. They taught us that lies were wrong, hiding things was wrong and getting dressed before leaving the house was right! (haha!) 
And while I always looked forward to that first day or two at my aunt's house in Houston, returning home and seeing my Momma, hearing her voice and knowing that I was home was always the best part of the entire trip!
Aunts and Uncles and Cousins are great, but Momma and Daddy and little Brothers are always better! At least they were for me...

Don't get me wrong. I appreciated my aunt driving all the way to our home in the country and getting me. I appreciated the time my female cousins spent with me and the things we did while there...shopping, going places, playing dress up, playing board games and so forth. I appreciated all of the fabulous clothing & shoes they gave me. 
But...there was just no place like home and no one as comfortable back then as my Momma.