Ready Made Family.

 Moonshine whiskey, cheap and available, accompanied the cowboys on trail rides, roundups, brandings and local dances. At the dances, dressed in clean Levi’s, cowboy shirts with kerchief’s around their neck, moonshine limbered cowboy legs after riding all day and they danced with pretty girls, late into the night. 

I choose to believe that Daddy met a certain girl, Blanche Parkin Fields, at one of those dances in 1929. I know for a fact that he courted her, taking her to dances where they danced to the strains of  “The Tennessee Waltz” and “You are My Sunshine”. Daddy sang along as he held her close. Blanche, recently divorced, and in need of a home, had moved with her two little girls to her parents ranch. On his days off Daddy rode horseback to the Parkin ranch, where he stayed for dinner and then played endless games of cards on cold winter evenings. Daddy found another way to help pass the evenings, he loved children, and spent time playing with Blanche’s two little girls, Loraine, age three, and Barbara only nine months. I can picture him in my mind as after supper he, holding a little girl in each arm, singing them to sleep.

Blanche at age twenty had a slim figure, hazel eyes and dark wavy hair. Daddy fell in love not only with her, but also with her two little girls. I’m not sure who stole his heart first, Blanche or the girls. Loraine and Barbara soon started calling him “Daddy Joe”, and within a year Blanche and Daddy married and he would claim the girls as his own. 

A story told many times, about a visit Blanche and her sisters, Jessie and Peggy made to the sheep camp where Daddy was tending a herd of sheep. They rode horseback to the camp, where Daddy planned to cook dinner for them. A sudden winter storm forced them to spend the night at the sheep camp. As the story goes, they all took their shoes off and crawled into the one bed. Daddy first, next to the canvas wall, then Blanche, Jessie and last Peggy. If one person turned they all had to turn and although Daddy was in bed with three girls, he nearly froze his “back side”, pushed against the canvas wall of the sheep camp. The girls’ father arrived early the next morning to find Daddy out doing chores and the girls fixing breakfast before they started home. 

My parents married on September 3, 1930, one year into the great depression. They stood before a Justice of the Peace, with a borrowed ring and Aunt Jessie and Uncle Truman acted as their witnesses. Blanche held Loraine’s hand, and Daddy held Barbara in his arms, as they exchanged vows. Daddy started to put the ring on Blanche’s finger; Barbara accidentally hit his hand and knocked the ring to the floor. Amid much laughter and scrambling around on hands and knees, everyone looked for the ring before the ceremony could continue. With the last “I do,” Blanche and Daddy shared a kiss, hugged the two little girls and started a life that in the next twelve years would see four more children added to their family:  George, born May 25,1931; Joel, July 5,1934; Mona, December 14,1936; and myself, October 21,1942.