Put On A Happy Face

Mother and George

There is an old adage that most girls marry guys like their fathers.  I guess that stems from the fact that the father is the first male roll model and it feels familiar and comfortable.  My Dad was quiet, easy going on the outside, always listened and in his eyes I could do no wrong.  Mother on the other hand was loving one minute and totally 
unpredictable the next.  I always tried to be good, wear clothes she wanted me to wear, make good grades and do everything she wanted me to do. But the rules would change and I was always a disappointment to her.  After being married to Dennis for eight years I began to realize that I had married the personality traits of my Mother.

The year of 1974 started out pretty good.  We had the new Ed Mabry chassis, a new body and a new trailer.  I also found out I was pregnant with a due date sometime in October.  After being off two months on Wes's birth there was no need to set a real date this early.

Although I was not crazy about getting a boxer puppy she turned out to be a pretty sweet dog.  Her name was Dandy and she seemed quite alright with Wes poking at her eyes and pulling on her ears.  Since Dennis was still travelling every week and I was the one feeding her she quickly became my dog.  Dandy slept by my side of the bed at night, followed me to my ceramic workshop in the back yard to curl up in the boxes of shredded paper while I worked and was by my side all the time.

Wes and Dandy

The new dragster chassis got the 302 Ford engine installed and several attempts to get it to run consistently did not happen.  One night before the lettering and pin stripping was done on the car Dennis lost his temper when I offered a suggestion about what to do to the engine.  After all I had been around long enough to know something about them.  He flew into a rage and yelled at me that he felt like he was whipping a dead horse.  Anyone should know you should not yell at a pregnant woman.  Thank heavens Ralph and Mark popped in at that moment.  I was on the verge of tears but they thought the dead horse thing was the funniest thing they had heard in a long time and brought me to laughter.  When the ace painter, Zero Wasson, came to finish the car he painted a cartoon of a horse laying on it's back with all four hooves in the air.  The car was known from then on as the Dead Horse.

Town East Craft Show

Wes was growing like a weed, had a vivid imagination, never stopped talking or moving. At four years of age he was actually a lot of fun although there were times when I wanted to choke him. One time at a craft show at Town East Mall Wes and a fellow artist's little girl were playing behind us and then they were gone. Anne was panic stricken while I was not too concerned.  Anyone who took Wes would bring him back in ten minutes.  After about thirty minutes with Mall Security looking for them they were found eating ice cream cones in the mall office. It looked like my craft show days were numbered if I had to have a four year old with me all day.

                                                        Wes

The only friends I kept in contact with were Cathie and Pam from Stephens.  Pam had graduated from college in Arizona and went back to L.A. to work in banking.  I have stacks of letters and postcards from all around the world from her travels.  Cathie went to Texas Tech, met a great guy named Terry, got married and graduated with a mathematics teaching degree.  I always found it funny that she married an accountant and got a degree in math when she taught me to use red ink in my checkbook when I was overdrawn.

One day Cathie appeared on my doorstep.  That would be the first of many fun surprise visits through the years.  Wes fell instantly in love her with and said that when he grew up he was going to marry her.  Of course Cathie loved that.  Dennis and I took her out to dinner to the Old San Francisco Steakhouse where there was a waiting line.  Some bubba in line behind us started making remarks to her which were not very nice.  She turned around, stared at him with those huge blue eyes and told him in a very loud voice exactly where and what he could do with his male appendage.  Everyone in the line gasped and I thought Dennis was going to faint.  The bubba went silent for a few minutes and then apologized to her. That was typical Cathie and I loved every visit.  Dennis did not.

Sometime that spring or summer Dennis got a promotion from service rep to Owner's Relations Manager and the travelling slowed down.  After four years of him being gone all week he was suddenly home for dinner at 5:05 every afternoon.  He brought work home almost every night and it was not an easy adjustment to say the least.  Two things stand out in my mind.  One night Wes was running though the house playing and Dennis shouted for me to shut that screaming brat up.  The other was his statement that if he ever had a handicapped child he would put it in some institution.  Neither comment set very well with me as I had always thought I wanted to have six boys and I was pregnant at that time.  Time to rethink having any more children.

Although I had not kept in contact with any of my high school friends or even seen any of them on trips to Muskogee to see family I got a letter about our ten year reunion.  I really wanted to go.  After all I had spent all of my school years with these friends.  A year before I had organized and got all of Dennis's class together for a reunion so I assumed we would go to mine. Oh, how wrong could I be? There was some excuse about me being six months pregnant - so?  All I know is that I did not get to go and spent that entire weekend crying.   I ran out of imaginary black stars for awhile over that one.

October rolled around .  The dragster was still behaving like a dead horse making that part of my life difficult.  Dandy, the boxer, had developed Demodectic mange when she was about four months old.  Many trips to several vets and hundreds of dollars did not cure it.  She could no longer come in the house and it was getting cold outside.  It broke my heart but on the advice of the vet I had to put her down.

George had gone fishing one weekend at Beaver's Bend and came home on Sunday night telling Mom he thought he had gotten a cold.  Mom was going to school to become a nurse since George did not want her to work.  She had gotten a job when they first got married but he told her she was ruining his tax bracket so he gave her a couple of gas wells and an allowance to stay home.  When she came home from class on Monday morning she could not understand anything George said.  In the emergency room it was determined he had gotten stung by a wasp,  had viral encephalitis and lapsed into a coma that night.  He passed away on Thursday at the age of 57. They had only been married for four years during which Mother was the happiest I had ever seen her.

After a quick visit with Dr. Herndon on Friday he gave me a thumbs down on going to Oklahoma City to George's memorial service on Saturday.  Dennis attended the service which was probably not very comforting for Mother as they never got along well.

                                                                          Wally

I messed up Dr. Herndon's office hours on Monday by giving birth to Walter William Tarkington that afternoon.  Another healthy eight pound baby boy. One might think "What else could possibly happen?".  Well, life-changing events always seemed to pop up out of nowhere and grab you.  Seemed to happen often in our household and I was becoming very adept at putting on the happy face.