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"No, they're all mine and it's no picnic!"
Coming from a large family of six boys and one girl it was always a big
production to do anything, whether it was going to Arkansas to visit
grandparents or getting ready for school or simply sitting down for a
meal. I was the oldest boy but my sister, Marlene, was the oldest
overall. Being the oldest boy didn't necessarily translate into "rank
has its privileges," and I was often saddled with the responsibility of
watching out for my brothers, who invariably rushed headlong into
mischief and raising havoc.
My dad was a traveling salesman for a large boot company and was on the
road from Monday through Friday, which left my mother alone all week to
cope with us little heathens. We typically had grand jury investigations
every Friday as my mother would go through the litany of crimes and
misdemeanors that we had committed since the previous Monday and then we
would line up and pass through the gauntlet as my dad would whack us a
few times with his big cowboy belt.
Marlene and I were always referred to by name but after awhile it became
more convenient to refer to the rest of the progeny as just "the Boys":
"The Boys' room is a mess" or "The Boys did it" or "It's the Boys' turn
to mow the yard" or "Tell the Boys to come and eat" and so forth. Being
called by name meant you had direct culpability in any misadventure that
my mother happened to discover, whereas my brothers could always find
safety in numbers, which had the effect of encouraging them all the more.
In 1960 we moved from a small rent house on the western outskirts of
Fort Worth to a new tract home in Haltom City. The house only had three
bedrooms and my baby brother Russell was put into Marlene's room, which
meant the Boys' room looked like a ranch bunkhouse, with the five of us
packed into a room that was only 10 by 12 feet.
I don't think a herd of goats could have kept the grass in the backyard
any sparser than six boys with Tonka toys. We had a fairly substantial
excavation going on in one corner of the yard one summer when a big
thunderstorm came roaring in and flooded the whole yard, much to our
dismay--until we discovered mud was fun too! I grabbed some big
paintbrushes that my grandfather had left behind on a previous visit and
we began to paint ourselves from head to toe, including any of the
neighborhood kids who happened by to investigate the raucous activity in
the backyard. My mother, waking from a nap, looked on in horror as we
slung the mud all over. In an instant she stepped out on the back porch
and started barking orders to cease and desist and line up for a
whipping as we went straight to the bathroom for a bath. Just as one of
us began to sneak around the corner of the house to escape the belt, she
yelled out in a tone of voice that froze all of us in our tracks, "If
you think you're going to get away, you're going to get it twice as
bad!!!" The kid replied in a sheepish voice, "But I don't belong to
you!" and started crying.
My mother also came from a large family of five girls and one boy,
including two sets of twins. When my grandfather was taking all of them
for a walk one day to the park in Kansas City a lady asked if it was a
church picnic and he replied, "No, they're all mine and it's no picnic!"
Terry Capehart
Farmersville, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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