juniorcloud2

    When Junior and Irene's first child died they were both brokenhearted. When I came along it was like Daddy had gotten a another chance to have a little girl. Irene had a cat and one time Junior found the cat sitting on my chest when I was still a baby. Not a smart cat. Daddy took it outside and shot it.
     Seems like he was always in danger of loosing me. At 11 months old I contracted polio and became very sick. Took them awhile to find a doctor who could tell them what was wrong with me. I would have to endure years of surgery. At six years old I fell off the front porch steps and landed on a piece of broken glass from a broken canning jar. The glass cut one of the main artery in front of my ear and I almost bled to death. I lost over half the blood in my body before daddy could get the bleeding stopped.
      I was taken to the Miner's hospital and sewn up and given transfusions. I don't remember how long I stayed in the hospital. I remembered falling over the steps and the feeling of the glass going into my head. I cried and screamed but it took mom a while to come and check on the screaming. She held me in her arms on the porch while daddy put his big thumb in my head and pressed until the blood stopped. There was a pan of water by my head that was blood red.
     When I was brought home from the hospital, daddy slept on the floor in front of the couch, when he was not working in the mines, where I slept until I got better. It was touch and go for a week and then I began to improve. Mom kept watch between taking care of my other brothers.
     My father and I were very close when I was little. I remember how handsome he was. He taught me to count in my mind instead of on a piece of paper. I followed him around a lot. One time he was drinking homebrew and gave me some. It was horrible. Mom never knew about that.
     There were lots more minor injuries to me.   Two broken arms, lots of cuts and scrapes, wrecked on a bike and hurt myself. My brother Tony rolled a rock down the side of a hill. It hit a rock and bounced into the air. The direction changed in mid air and the rock hit me in the knee of my good leg and cut it open. Tony cried and begged me not to tell daddy what happened. Tony knew that he would get a whipping. I am sure that daddy gave the boys orders to take care of me when I was with them whether near the house or following them to the mountains.
     When we moved to Louisville and I became a teenager daddy and I grew apart. When I was in highschool, mom left daddy and we moved to another apartment to live. I cried and cried. I missed him so bad. I thought it was the end of the world and I would never see him again. Not so. Daddy would find out where we were living and talk mom into coming back and then another fight and we would be moving again. Mom and Dad got divorced shortly before I got married and moved to New Jersey. Every time I came home to Louisville to visit mom I would find out where Daddy was living and go see him.
     Five years later they were remarried and moved back to Stretch Neck Holler into a trailer where our old house used to stand.