I was born a year after they moved to Porterville, completing their family. Everyone wanted another boy, and vowed to have nothing to do with me, another girl! But Mom said that as soon as I started to cry they couldn’t wait to hold me. My older siblings were in their teens when I was born and loved taking care of me. My sister, Mona was six years older than me and was not happy, when I got more than my share of attention from “her” Daddy. She didn’t like me sitting on his knee at the breakfast table tasting his coffee. Daddy’s coffee was the best. It was a cup almost full of very strong coffee, with two spoonful of sugar added and then filled with thick cream. Mona didn’t like the taste of coffee but would try to inch her way in, so she could sit on Daddy’s lap as well. He would move me to his other knee and say, “Okay Sister come on there is room for you too,” and we would sit, each on a knee, me taking sips of his coffee, until he hugged us and lovingly scooted us off his lap and left for work.
While in Porterville, two grandsons were added to our family, when Loraine married Steve Smith and Barbara married Worthy Reed…I became an aunt at 3 years of age to George Smith and Alan Reed. Now I had to share my dad, with two little boys.
Daddy borrowed money to buy a combine and a baler and had a good business working for other farmers. The idea was to pay off the new machinery with money earned from these jobs. Money always seemed to be in short supply no matter how hard my parents worked. Always of course the weather played a big part in farming and just when a bumper crop seemed eminent, hail or torrential rain would ruin it. The farm after nine years was overwhelmed with debt and Daddy started talking about moving.
GREAT read
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