It has been a long time since I've felt inspired to write. It used to come so easily, like a hot knife through butter. For those of you who don't know really know the story of my life over the past several years, let me give you the quickest update imaginable.
My mother is the most important influence on my life to date. She is the most amazing person I've ever known... wicked smart, endlessly capable, a badass poker player, a solid provider, a loving and generous heart, but tough as nails. She had a hard life. She lost her father at age 10. He was a very loving and capable man himself, building his own small empire before he passed. He was the very first auto-dealer to introduce Datsuns (Nissan for those of you who don't know any better) to the DFW metroplex. He was on track to be a multi-billionaire. And he came from nothing. He was one of eight children in a starving, depression-era family, just like my grandmother, whom he married. I think he even spent time in prison for cattle-rustling. He paid the price. But even while he was in prison, he sent food money home to his family from his poker winnings. This somehow reminds me of the movie "Rounders." Every really good poker player gets dealt had a bad beat, but the ones that can persevere can make a living off it.
Back to the timeline, my Aunt Peggy was born four years after Jimmy, and my mom four years after Peggy. They are all four yeara apart, plus or minus a few months. My mother was the baby, but only because my grandparents lost their fourth child, baby Jessica. And this, my dear readers, is foreshadowing.
Even though my mom did well in school and was plenty bright herself, times were different then. Women weren't pressured to get an education; they were pressured to get married and have babies.
So for the first ten years of my mother's life, fourteen for my Aunt Peggy and eighteen for my Uncle Jimmy, all was blissful and happy. And then the jackhammer that is Texas winter weather sealed their fates. My grandfather was driving on icy roads in on of his Datsuns and was killed in a car accident. He was a tall but thin fellow, and the impact of the crash just took him to pieces. This was before airbags and seatbelts, but its effect was no less tragic. It changed the future of my whole family instantaneously. The irony, Dear God, the irony. He died in one of the model cars he sold for a living to put bread and meat on the table. Bu then again, anyone living in Texas knows that we just don't know what to do in icy weather. It is so random for us that we don't bother with tire chains or similar.
My grandmother was a little hottie, and she she was nothing short of sharp herself for wrangling this cowboy. He got out of prison early by volunteering for WWII. He was a para-trooper, and I think he took that job because it paid something like $50 more a year. He literally jumped out of a plane with a parachute and a machine weapon and somehow managed to fight his way home to the woman he loved - my grandmother.
Jesse (my grandfather I never knew) was from Blum, and my grandmother from Cleburne.
Their story is one akin to a fairy-tale romance. The fell in love, he went off to war, he came home alive from war (after losing brothers, and I don't just mean the "Band of Brothers" type). They married in a small ceremony, and before too long, my Uncle Jimmy was born.
My Uncle Jimmy was a natural-born used-car salesman. I'm pretty sure he spent time in Korea, but I might be confusing my timelines here. He is not what I would call a grifter, but he has all the makings for one. For most of his adult life, he sold cars, too. He had a daughter named Tina from his first marriage to Carlene, and he has twin girls named Meagan and Courtney from his second marriage to Susan. Funnily enough, I don't actually recall how Jimmy and Susan met. I think at bingo. But before we get to far into the story, there is something about Jimmy and Susan I want you to know. When I was lying in a coma in a hospital bed and my famiy dug through all my mail to discover I had not paid my most recent health insu8rance premiums, it was Jimmy and Susan that stepped up to the plate and mailed them a check.
I didn't know quite what to think about Susan at first, but I babysat for them often and adored their twin daughters. My mom didn't like Susan at first, and I think that is where my prejudice came from. I think she thought she was bad for Jimmy because she was a gambler, too.
My grandfather, whom I never had the grace to meet, was Jesse Lawton Elmore. My grandmother, whom I've known intimately, lived with for most of my childhood, and to whom I love to this day, is Billie Marie Bell Elmore. Kids growing up were cruel. They used to call her "Ding Dong " Bell. But my grandmother is no dummy. She might very well be one of the brightest people I know. I can very well remember to this day the advice she used to give me about my younger and pestilent brother - James. She told me, "Angie, you brother is your blood. Don't fight him; love him. Besides, one of these days he will be bigger than you and able to kick your ass. And don't you ever forget that." She was right then as she is now, about that and about almost everything. Since I was 6 when my parents split and we were raised by a grandmother and mother, they have been the most important influences of our lives - good or bad.
My father, still alive... (To Be Continued)
1:53 a.m. - 2015-09-24
Recent entries:
Urgent: Slowly Disintegrating and Virtually Disappearing Sense of Reality - 2021-07-28
Ladies Light it Up - 2020-04-25
Bored to Death - 2020-04-03
A Cold and Broken Hallelujah - 2020-03-31
A Cold and Broken Hallelujah - 2020-03-31
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