Post by Karla Shelton on Sept 5, 2006 16:33:43 GMT -5
June 13, 2005
My dearest Great Grandchild,
Hi there. I hope I have lived long enough to meet you, but at this particular point in time, you don’t yet exist, although I love you already.
My name is Karla. Karla Jean Shelton. I’m your great grandma. I was born on September 9, 1953 at the doctor’s office/clinic in Houston, Missouri. Houston is a small town in south-central Missouri. It’s located 32 miles south of Fort Leonard Wood, 50 miles southwest of Rolla, and 90 miles northeast of Springfield. It’s about 50 miles due north of the Arkansas state line. Houston is a pretty area, being part of the Mark Twain National Forest. It’s included in Piney Township, which is in Texas County. Houston is the county seat.
HWYs 63 and 17 intersect in Houston. It seems that Sam Houston had passed through and stayed in Houston at some time, which is where the town and the county got their names. In fact, HWY 63 runs right through Houston, and within the city limits it’s called Sam Houston Boulevard. All I can say is that old Sam Houston must have really made an impression on the folks living there at the time to have so much named after him.
Houston was also the childhood home of Emmett Kelly. Some people may still remember him, if anyone that old is still alive. Ha-ha-ha! He was a circus clown. He was with the Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus during WWII times. He was known as Weary Willie. He was a sad clown and dressed like a hobo. His smile was turned upside down, and he had a tear painted under his eye as part of his makeup. He was so sad because of the state of the world at that time. He appeared on the Red Skelton Show, which was a very popular television show when I was a kid. I must admit that Sam Houston and Emmett Kelly were both pretty important in their day, and they both had a connection, in their own respective ways, to Houston. But even more important is the fact that Houston is part of me and my family – your family – and we are a part of Houston.
Let me tell you about your family. We’re not much different than any other family, but they all surely do mean the world to me! I’ll start by telling you about Mama. Mama was born on December 22, 1927, in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. Mt. Vernon is in Jefferson County, and is pretty close to being in the middle of that state. Mama is the youngest of the three children born to Charles Edward and Elsie Vivian Higginson. Grandma Higginson was a Lowry before she got married. Mama was the only daughter. She had two older brothers, Edward Vernon and Virgil Lee Higginson. The elder of the two, Edward, was always called “Buddy” by the family, and as he got older, the “Buddy” changed to “Bud” to many in the family and to his friends. When Mama was born, Grandma and Grandpa Higginson told Uncle Bud that he could name the new baby. He took it very seriously, with much pondering for several days. He finally found what he thought to be the perfect name for his new baby sister: Wanda Maxine. And so she was named. As Mama grew up, she hated the name Wanda and chose to go by her middle name of Maxine, but her family all called her “Tootie.” This family used middle names and nicknames quite often, and I believe that tradition was passed down from both sides of Mama’s family, both Higginson and Lowry, since I’ve found that happened often in both family histories.
When Mama was 14, in 1942, the Ed and Elsie Higginson family moved to Houston, and shortly thereafter Mama and Daddy met for the first time. Daddy was born on September 11, 1925, at Bado, Missouri. Bado is just outside of Houston, and is also in Texas County. Bado was never much more than a speck on the map, and that may even be an exaggeration. It hasn’t changed much through the years. Bado still has farms, cattle, and horses. There are many more animals than there ever have been people there. Bado is a nice little countrified community filled with good, honest people who are also nice and countrified.
When Daddy was born, he had one older sister, Bertha Willetta, who was about three years old then. When Daddy was about three, Grandma and Grandpa Shelton had another daughter, Bonnie Arlene. Grandma Shelton came up with Daddy’s name, Vancil Winford Shelton. I don’t know for certain from what or where she pulled that name, but through the years I have often heard that Grandma had read the name in a book, and that it struck her as being a mighty fine name for a son. That may very well be true, but I also know that Grandma Shelton had a couple of cousins named Ansel and Mancel Coats. Now, it seems quite possible to me that the reason the name struck Grandma Shelton was that it went right along with those two names. Quite nicely, I do believe, so if Grandma had truly read that name in a book, it may just explain why she chose it for her only son.
After Mama and Daddy met and began dating while Mama was in high school (Daddy quit high school in his 10th year), it became obvious that Mama and Daddy were made for each other. When Daddy was in the Army during WWII, Mama met him in Columbia, South Carolina, where they got married in the courthouse there, on September 11, 1945. It was Daddy’s 20th birthday.
As I mentioned, Daddy was in the U.S. Army during World War II. He took his basic training in Ft. Leonard Wood with both of Mama’s brothers, Uncle Bud and Uncle Virgil Higginson, as well as with numerous cousins from the Houston Area. Daddy spent some time in Germany during that war, but he never shared many of his experiences with us five girls. (My sister Connie, the oldest, was born on August 9, 1946, in Bado, Missouri. Brenda, the next oldest, was born in Houston, Missouri on January 13, 1950. I was born… well, I already told you that. I was the middle child. Pam, next to the youngest, was born November 11, 1955, in Houston, and Barb, the baby of the family, was born November 9, 1961, in La Mirada, Los Angeles County, California.)
As I was saying, though… Daddy didn’t tell us much about his Army days. About the only thing I can remember is him telling us that he drove a “big shot around Germany in a Jeep.” He only told us that because we were asking him about World War II. One of us must have been studying it in History class in school, I would assume. I remember asking Daddy if it was fun to drive a big shot around Germany in a Jeep. The look on his face told me that it was anything but fun to drive a big shot around Germany in a Jeep during World War II. His eyes were looking into his memories without focusing on anything at all in the living room. His face flushed slightly and his jaws became taught. The muscles worked involuntarily. I remember Daddy eventually looked at me before he spoke. It seemed an eternity before he turned his head to me, but I know it was really only a matter of seconds. I’d never seen that look on Daddy’s face before. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew it didn’t mean anything good, and I later knew I never wanted to see it again, so this was the last time I ever directly asked him anything about the War.
Quietly, Daddy answered, “No, Baby Doll, it wasn’t fun.”
I asked, “Did you ever get shot at, Daddy?”
Looking at me with sad, softened eyes, he replied, “Yes, I got shot at.”
After a short silence, I very quietly, nearly in a whisper, asked him, “Daddy, did you ever have to shoot back?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer I feared.
Just as quietly he replied, “Yes, Baby Doll, I had to shoot back.”
“Why, Daddy? Couldn’t you just hide until they went away?”
“No, Baby.”
“How come, Daddy?”
“Well, Baby, I had to get the Captain safe first. We jumped out of the Jeep and took cover behind it, laying on our bellies on the dirt so the bullets didn’t get us. Then I had to shoot so the Captain wouldn’t get shot.”
“What’s a Captain?”
“He’s a big shot.”
“Well, was the big shot shooting, too, Daddy, to keep you from getting shot by the bullets?”
“I don’t know, Baby. I expect he probably was, but I don’t know for sure if he was or not.”
“Well, if you had to shoot, he should have to shoot, too.”
“I don’t know, Honey, maybe so. But the Captain was a lot more important than I was. He had important Army business to take care of. My job was to make sure he got where he had to go, all in one piece.”
Frowning, I said, “That’s not very nice, Daddy. You’re important!”
“I’m glad you think so, Lollipop. Now how’s ‘bout you climbing up here and hugging my neck a little bit?”
I happily climbed up onto Daddy’s lap and hugged his neck with all my might. I said, “I don’t like that shooting stuff, Daddy.”
“I don’t like it either, Baby Doll.”
“How come they do all that mean stuff, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, Baby doll. That’s what the Army does when they have to, I guess. Let’s go see if Mama has some ice cream!” Up we hopped, running hand in hand toward the kitchen with Daddy, using his “kid” voice, saying, “Mama, you got any ice ream in there for us kids? We’re awful hungry for ice cream!”
A year or so passed, and I remember noticing that Daddy never ate a chocolate bar, even though he loved chocolate. He ate chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, he ate peanut clusters, and he ate other chocolate items… but he never ate a Hershey bar. Hershey bars were the greatest. They were solid candy bars made of milk chocolate. They were magnificent! Do they still have Hershey bars, I wonder?
One day I asked Mama why Daddy never ate Hershey bars. She told me that when Daddy was in the Army and was coming home, they sent him and a lot of other soldiers on a boat. She said that “they gave the boys great big Hershey bars” for a treat. She said those Hershey bars were real thick – a half inch thick or better, holding up her fingers to show me how thick they were. It was the first chocolate bars “the boys” had eaten in quite a while, and many of them, Daddy included, “ate Hershey bars ‘til they got sick.” The combination of a huge amount of chocolate and swaying ship must have gotten the best of them. Mama said that “most of the boys,” Daddy included, “got awfully sick and had to hang their heads over the side of the boat, and that only made them sicker.” They were “sicker ‘n dogs,” Mama said. “Sicker ‘n dogs.”
Now, Daddy loved peanut clusters – those chocolate- and caramel- coated peanuts that were about the size of a teasthingy. He ate those often, as he did the other chocolate things I mentioned earlier. However, in the almost 42 years that I knew my daddy, I never once saw or heard of him eating a Hershey bar since the day he became “sicker ‘n a dog” on that ship rocking from the ocean waves on his way home from Germany. I guess his reason was a good one, and I can’t say that I can blame him for staying away from them.
Once, shortly after Mama had told me about Daddy’s chocolate bar nightmare, I asked Daddy if he wanted a bite of my Hershey bar. He declined, saying, “Oh, no. No thank ye, Baby Doll.” I asked him why. He said, “I got sick on them things a long time ago, and I don’t want another one as long as I live.”
“How sick did you get, Daddy?” I asked of my ever-patient father.
“Sicker ‘n a dog, Baby Doll, sicker ‘n a dog. But I’ll take one of them good old peanut clusters if Mama has any,” he said with his familiar twinkle-eyed grin. I ran into the kitchen to find Mama to get my daddy some peanut clusters. I knew for certain that Mama hadn’t been pulling my leg about the candy bars, and I surely didn’t want Daddy to get “sicker ‘n a dog” again! I returned proudly with the peanut clusters, and climbed up on his lap. We ate our respective candy without ever offering a bite to the other, but with each bite we grinned at each other until we giggled, and the giggling became uncontrollable. After we finally composed ourselves we’d take another bite and repeat the process. Needless to say, it was so much fun for both of us that we took very tiny bites, and we certainly did an incredible amount of uncontrollable giggling. I dare say it never took me so long to eat a Hershey bar! I surely do love and miss my daddy. You’d have loved him, too, I know.
Well, it’s getting late and I need to get to bed. I have to get up early in the morning. The chores won’t get done if I don’t get up to do them! I’ll write again soon, though.
Your loving Great Grandma
My dearest Great Grandchild,
Hi there. I hope I have lived long enough to meet you, but at this particular point in time, you don’t yet exist, although I love you already.
My name is Karla. Karla Jean Shelton. I’m your great grandma. I was born on September 9, 1953 at the doctor’s office/clinic in Houston, Missouri. Houston is a small town in south-central Missouri. It’s located 32 miles south of Fort Leonard Wood, 50 miles southwest of Rolla, and 90 miles northeast of Springfield. It’s about 50 miles due north of the Arkansas state line. Houston is a pretty area, being part of the Mark Twain National Forest. It’s included in Piney Township, which is in Texas County. Houston is the county seat.
HWYs 63 and 17 intersect in Houston. It seems that Sam Houston had passed through and stayed in Houston at some time, which is where the town and the county got their names. In fact, HWY 63 runs right through Houston, and within the city limits it’s called Sam Houston Boulevard. All I can say is that old Sam Houston must have really made an impression on the folks living there at the time to have so much named after him.
Houston was also the childhood home of Emmett Kelly. Some people may still remember him, if anyone that old is still alive. Ha-ha-ha! He was a circus clown. He was with the Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus during WWII times. He was known as Weary Willie. He was a sad clown and dressed like a hobo. His smile was turned upside down, and he had a tear painted under his eye as part of his makeup. He was so sad because of the state of the world at that time. He appeared on the Red Skelton Show, which was a very popular television show when I was a kid. I must admit that Sam Houston and Emmett Kelly were both pretty important in their day, and they both had a connection, in their own respective ways, to Houston. But even more important is the fact that Houston is part of me and my family – your family – and we are a part of Houston.
Let me tell you about your family. We’re not much different than any other family, but they all surely do mean the world to me! I’ll start by telling you about Mama. Mama was born on December 22, 1927, in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. Mt. Vernon is in Jefferson County, and is pretty close to being in the middle of that state. Mama is the youngest of the three children born to Charles Edward and Elsie Vivian Higginson. Grandma Higginson was a Lowry before she got married. Mama was the only daughter. She had two older brothers, Edward Vernon and Virgil Lee Higginson. The elder of the two, Edward, was always called “Buddy” by the family, and as he got older, the “Buddy” changed to “Bud” to many in the family and to his friends. When Mama was born, Grandma and Grandpa Higginson told Uncle Bud that he could name the new baby. He took it very seriously, with much pondering for several days. He finally found what he thought to be the perfect name for his new baby sister: Wanda Maxine. And so she was named. As Mama grew up, she hated the name Wanda and chose to go by her middle name of Maxine, but her family all called her “Tootie.” This family used middle names and nicknames quite often, and I believe that tradition was passed down from both sides of Mama’s family, both Higginson and Lowry, since I’ve found that happened often in both family histories.
When Mama was 14, in 1942, the Ed and Elsie Higginson family moved to Houston, and shortly thereafter Mama and Daddy met for the first time. Daddy was born on September 11, 1925, at Bado, Missouri. Bado is just outside of Houston, and is also in Texas County. Bado was never much more than a speck on the map, and that may even be an exaggeration. It hasn’t changed much through the years. Bado still has farms, cattle, and horses. There are many more animals than there ever have been people there. Bado is a nice little countrified community filled with good, honest people who are also nice and countrified.
When Daddy was born, he had one older sister, Bertha Willetta, who was about three years old then. When Daddy was about three, Grandma and Grandpa Shelton had another daughter, Bonnie Arlene. Grandma Shelton came up with Daddy’s name, Vancil Winford Shelton. I don’t know for certain from what or where she pulled that name, but through the years I have often heard that Grandma had read the name in a book, and that it struck her as being a mighty fine name for a son. That may very well be true, but I also know that Grandma Shelton had a couple of cousins named Ansel and Mancel Coats. Now, it seems quite possible to me that the reason the name struck Grandma Shelton was that it went right along with those two names. Quite nicely, I do believe, so if Grandma had truly read that name in a book, it may just explain why she chose it for her only son.
After Mama and Daddy met and began dating while Mama was in high school (Daddy quit high school in his 10th year), it became obvious that Mama and Daddy were made for each other. When Daddy was in the Army during WWII, Mama met him in Columbia, South Carolina, where they got married in the courthouse there, on September 11, 1945. It was Daddy’s 20th birthday.
As I mentioned, Daddy was in the U.S. Army during World War II. He took his basic training in Ft. Leonard Wood with both of Mama’s brothers, Uncle Bud and Uncle Virgil Higginson, as well as with numerous cousins from the Houston Area. Daddy spent some time in Germany during that war, but he never shared many of his experiences with us five girls. (My sister Connie, the oldest, was born on August 9, 1946, in Bado, Missouri. Brenda, the next oldest, was born in Houston, Missouri on January 13, 1950. I was born… well, I already told you that. I was the middle child. Pam, next to the youngest, was born November 11, 1955, in Houston, and Barb, the baby of the family, was born November 9, 1961, in La Mirada, Los Angeles County, California.)
As I was saying, though… Daddy didn’t tell us much about his Army days. About the only thing I can remember is him telling us that he drove a “big shot around Germany in a Jeep.” He only told us that because we were asking him about World War II. One of us must have been studying it in History class in school, I would assume. I remember asking Daddy if it was fun to drive a big shot around Germany in a Jeep. The look on his face told me that it was anything but fun to drive a big shot around Germany in a Jeep during World War II. His eyes were looking into his memories without focusing on anything at all in the living room. His face flushed slightly and his jaws became taught. The muscles worked involuntarily. I remember Daddy eventually looked at me before he spoke. It seemed an eternity before he turned his head to me, but I know it was really only a matter of seconds. I’d never seen that look on Daddy’s face before. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew it didn’t mean anything good, and I later knew I never wanted to see it again, so this was the last time I ever directly asked him anything about the War.
Quietly, Daddy answered, “No, Baby Doll, it wasn’t fun.”
I asked, “Did you ever get shot at, Daddy?”
Looking at me with sad, softened eyes, he replied, “Yes, I got shot at.”
After a short silence, I very quietly, nearly in a whisper, asked him, “Daddy, did you ever have to shoot back?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer I feared.
Just as quietly he replied, “Yes, Baby Doll, I had to shoot back.”
“Why, Daddy? Couldn’t you just hide until they went away?”
“No, Baby.”
“How come, Daddy?”
“Well, Baby, I had to get the Captain safe first. We jumped out of the Jeep and took cover behind it, laying on our bellies on the dirt so the bullets didn’t get us. Then I had to shoot so the Captain wouldn’t get shot.”
“What’s a Captain?”
“He’s a big shot.”
“Well, was the big shot shooting, too, Daddy, to keep you from getting shot by the bullets?”
“I don’t know, Baby. I expect he probably was, but I don’t know for sure if he was or not.”
“Well, if you had to shoot, he should have to shoot, too.”
“I don’t know, Honey, maybe so. But the Captain was a lot more important than I was. He had important Army business to take care of. My job was to make sure he got where he had to go, all in one piece.”
Frowning, I said, “That’s not very nice, Daddy. You’re important!”
“I’m glad you think so, Lollipop. Now how’s ‘bout you climbing up here and hugging my neck a little bit?”
I happily climbed up onto Daddy’s lap and hugged his neck with all my might. I said, “I don’t like that shooting stuff, Daddy.”
“I don’t like it either, Baby Doll.”
“How come they do all that mean stuff, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, Baby doll. That’s what the Army does when they have to, I guess. Let’s go see if Mama has some ice cream!” Up we hopped, running hand in hand toward the kitchen with Daddy, using his “kid” voice, saying, “Mama, you got any ice ream in there for us kids? We’re awful hungry for ice cream!”
A year or so passed, and I remember noticing that Daddy never ate a chocolate bar, even though he loved chocolate. He ate chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, he ate peanut clusters, and he ate other chocolate items… but he never ate a Hershey bar. Hershey bars were the greatest. They were solid candy bars made of milk chocolate. They were magnificent! Do they still have Hershey bars, I wonder?
One day I asked Mama why Daddy never ate Hershey bars. She told me that when Daddy was in the Army and was coming home, they sent him and a lot of other soldiers on a boat. She said that “they gave the boys great big Hershey bars” for a treat. She said those Hershey bars were real thick – a half inch thick or better, holding up her fingers to show me how thick they were. It was the first chocolate bars “the boys” had eaten in quite a while, and many of them, Daddy included, “ate Hershey bars ‘til they got sick.” The combination of a huge amount of chocolate and swaying ship must have gotten the best of them. Mama said that “most of the boys,” Daddy included, “got awfully sick and had to hang their heads over the side of the boat, and that only made them sicker.” They were “sicker ‘n dogs,” Mama said. “Sicker ‘n dogs.”
Now, Daddy loved peanut clusters – those chocolate- and caramel- coated peanuts that were about the size of a teasthingy. He ate those often, as he did the other chocolate things I mentioned earlier. However, in the almost 42 years that I knew my daddy, I never once saw or heard of him eating a Hershey bar since the day he became “sicker ‘n a dog” on that ship rocking from the ocean waves on his way home from Germany. I guess his reason was a good one, and I can’t say that I can blame him for staying away from them.
Once, shortly after Mama had told me about Daddy’s chocolate bar nightmare, I asked Daddy if he wanted a bite of my Hershey bar. He declined, saying, “Oh, no. No thank ye, Baby Doll.” I asked him why. He said, “I got sick on them things a long time ago, and I don’t want another one as long as I live.”
“How sick did you get, Daddy?” I asked of my ever-patient father.
“Sicker ‘n a dog, Baby Doll, sicker ‘n a dog. But I’ll take one of them good old peanut clusters if Mama has any,” he said with his familiar twinkle-eyed grin. I ran into the kitchen to find Mama to get my daddy some peanut clusters. I knew for certain that Mama hadn’t been pulling my leg about the candy bars, and I surely didn’t want Daddy to get “sicker ‘n a dog” again! I returned proudly with the peanut clusters, and climbed up on his lap. We ate our respective candy without ever offering a bite to the other, but with each bite we grinned at each other until we giggled, and the giggling became uncontrollable. After we finally composed ourselves we’d take another bite and repeat the process. Needless to say, it was so much fun for both of us that we took very tiny bites, and we certainly did an incredible amount of uncontrollable giggling. I dare say it never took me so long to eat a Hershey bar! I surely do love and miss my daddy. You’d have loved him, too, I know.
Well, it’s getting late and I need to get to bed. I have to get up early in the morning. The chores won’t get done if I don’t get up to do them! I’ll write again soon, though.
Your loving Great Grandma