My In Between Aunts on the Phillips Side

My other aunts on the Phillips side were Lillian Ann Ferguson and Mattie Clyde Harman, Russell, Hebinck.  Mother was closest to Mattie because she lived with her while she attended high school.  Mattie was born prematurely, a cup fit over her head and she slept in a shoebox on the oven door.  Grandma tried breast milk and cow`s milk with no results.  Finally she tried sugar and coffee and she began to thrive.  She was a kind lady that was widowed with 3 baby boys-the oldest maybe 7 when 1st husband Delbert Harman died.  Notice the 'man' on Harman Mother always stressed 'man'.  Delbert made Mother the curio shelf with the elaborate cutouts that I have in my bedroom.  Her siblings helped out during the summers.  Milton and Delsa moved in with her early in their marriage to help with the boys and help with the bills.  Mattie worked and retired from a couthouse job.  All of the boys grew up to be upstanding citizens.  She remarried when the boys were all grown to a jolly man named Floyd Russell.  They were married several years before he died.  Mattie told Mother she dreaded the awful lonliness.  Awhile later she married Bernard Hebinck.  He was not a good soul.  Mostly seemed to be after a free lunch.  He is one of only 2 in the  family Mother did not like.  They drove new cars between dealerships.  They were in a small plane crash coming home from one of these trips.  She was killed.  He went home to her house thinking he had a home free and clear.  Surprise she had put the house in her boys` names years before.

Lillian Ann Ferguson lived in Freedom.  Even tho we knew she and her family were family we weren`t close.  I guess possibly because of the age difference.  She was nearly 20 years older than Mother.  Mother said her family thought they were better than us.  I think the old home had some bad memories for her.  Who knows!  I had 2 of her granddaughters as good friends.

Daddy`s sisters`s stories come next time.

 

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Talk About Home Alone

I am inserting one of Dad`s family stories out of order because I found it so interesting.  We visited his Aunt Jean Short Allin in Florida this week.  She told stories almost the entire 48 hours we were there.  Hopefully she will write a book as she has always intended.

I will paraphase here her written copy.  Her and Granny Fannie`s dad, Ira Lee Short at age 6, while living in Missouri lost his mother 4 days after she gave birth to a son.  There was also a 4 year old sister named Sadie.  There were no near neighbors so his father fixed a sugar teat for the baby and warned the other 2 to be brave, take care of each other, keep the fire going to discourage wild animals from scenting dead mother in the bed, and left on horseback to telegraph his mother in Texas of the death.  Ira posed in the doorway with a loaded gun against his shoulder on the lookout for panthers, bears, etc. while Sadie fetched water and more wood from outside.  The trip took 2 or 3 days but seemed like forever to the kids.  He brought back help from town to bury the Ma.  It was cold and difficult to dig a deep grave.  Ira and Sadie piled rocks on the somewhat shallow grave.

Grandma arrived by train when she could get there and they all moved back with her and she helped rear the children until her death 5 years later.  The dad did not remarry until the children were grown.

I will relate more stories later.

My In Between Uncles

My other uncles on Mother`s side were Marlin Dewey Phillips and Garland Roy Phillips.  I knew Garland the least.  He tried to farm out by Freedom in his earlier adult years.  He couldn`t make a go of it, pulled up and moved to Washington state.  There he farmed a truck farm.  I remember visiting there at about age 6 and seeing irrigation ditches, foreign to me, and the cannery where he sold his vegetables.  Garland suffered from a mild form of epilepsy.

Marlin went to OU in the late 1920`s.  He was short, maybe 5' 8", but played football there.  I researched those years.  They didn`t have  very successful seasons about that time.  I remember people referring to him as Uncle Stub.  He was a pharmacist and set up a drugstore in Mooreland until his first wife died of diptheria leaving him with an infant son, Martin George.  He moved to California and lived there until Martin George at age 5 died after a tonsillectomy.  He had always promised his son he could visit Grandma Phillips on the farm.  When Marlin brought him home to bury next to his mother he took him to the farm to lie in state.  It was so cold the flowers around the casket froze in the unheated room.  Marlin returned to California, eventually married again, and had a daughter Marlene who was an artist.  The flower painting (supposedly done by a new technique Marlene developed) in my blue bedroom is her work.  She married beneath her according to her parents and had several children.  Marlin was the one who gave the old pictures of the great grandparents to me when they divided up things of Grandma Phillips.  Told me an old fashioned gift to go with an old fashioned husband of my future.

The other uncle on Dad`s side was Leo Joseph Balk or Joseph Leo we`re not sure which is first name.  He was a school teacher but developed a brain tumor that took his life at an early age.  He had 2 sons and a daughter.  The girl died young.  My dad always thought it from a botched abortion.  One son was mentally retarded and lived out his life in a nursing home in Enid.  The other son I never knew but grew to adulthood and had a family.