Frances Louise

My mother was an only child, raised by her mother and grandmother.

During the  depression, money was tight,  my grandma, and my great-grandmother had to work long hours to make ends meet.
Mom being a  latchkey kid, and spending so much time alone,  developed an amazing imagination.   That and her dry sense of humor made us always question…fact or fiction!

When mother graduated from high school,  she worked in a department store. This helped pay for clothes , and anything else she had to have s a young girl spreading her wings.

Mom, and dad  met  at a dance, and slowly the romance began. It was a match made in heaven. Dad a business man with General Motors, mom a  beautiful young woman dreaming of her prince charming. Some say she made a great Trophy Wife!  I’m not sure that was a compliment, but I’m going to take it that way!

They married on Friday the 13th, in December of 1941, and always insisted it was good luck for them. Their  marriage was a good one, and they accomplished many things during their fifty-two years.   Dad always told me he hoped my kids would bring me every bit as much happiness as we had brought him.  As I looked back, I don’t think he meant that in a good way.  We did give them grief from time to time, and both of them being only children, they didn’t always handle it well!

Mother was much more calm about things even though she didn’t have any siblings herself.  She wanted a family and I have to say she handled all the chaos quite well.

Mom had stories, many stories, and we could never tell if they were true or her imagination.  I always encouraged her to write, but she didn’t have any interest in putting anything into words on paper, so her stories go untold.

Except for this one…

My grandmother remarried when Mother was around fifteen, and during the reception someone needed to go to the market to get something  for the party so Mother rode along.  On this day it was raining, and on the way home the Model T she was riding in skidded off the road, and down an embankment landing upside down in the middle of a stream.  This sounded terrifying to us as kids, but it gets better!  The stream was reportedly not just full of water, and moving fast, but Mother could hear the rescuers shouting to get them out of the water quickly as there were snakes in the stream.  A terrifying thing to have happen, and one would have thought both Mom and the driver would have ended up in the hospital, but not so.  They were retrieved out of the water and sent home.  Mom said she was covered in blood as she had hit her mouth on the dashboard. Her mother was horrified, but after checking her over, left on her honeymoon anyway.

Fack or Fiction?

This is how I know Mom!

We’ll never know, but my kids were told the same story without deviation, so collectively we agreed it must have been true.  We just can’t even imagine something like that happening, and not going to emergency. I guess we’ve come quite for in the last seventy-five years or so… It was a good story, and there were lots of them,one of these days I’ll remember some more.

Thank you for stopping to read my story,  see you soon……