Playing With Guns

After my Aunt Maymie's funeral, some of us gathered in a house they had rented for four days at $45 a night. Maymie's three surviving children were there and two grandchildren. As I said before, my family had lived with them for a time... they helped me figure out it was about 20 months... the longest my family ever lived in one spot until my junior year in high school.

We talked about old times and cousin Geneva reminded me that it was she and I who were defending the chicken house roof when I almost killed John. In fact she and I often were on the wrong side of good behavior, and when adults approached, she had an uncanny ability to just disappear. All at once, she was "outta there!" I'd be standing red-handed and alone. I never learned, though, and never blamed her for fleeing the scene. If anything, I admired her cunning.

John's daughter Vicki was shocked at some of our youthful activities. For example, we played cowboys and Indians with real rifles, not loaded, of course... well, except for once. God was surely with us because even though we'd usually grab the guns and start clicking away at one another, this day, John pulled the trigger without aiming at anyone. POP! The bullet slammed into the ground sending dirt (and kids) flying. A warning? If so, we didn't notice and continued our armed play often.

I have a scar across my left hand. Frank had an axe and I a pitchfork, and we were going at it with gusto and an audience. It was sort of a modified sword fight. He swung hard catching my hand in mid air with only the corner of his weapon (else I would now be a one-handed woman). Aunt Maymie sewed me back together and sent us all back out to play. No doubt had I not so carefully kept my wounded knee a secret (see yesterday's blog) Aunt Maymie would have sewn it up, too. But, afraid someone would know of my grain diving crimes, I kept the knee bandaged in old rags for a long time. It oozed blood and serum for days. Oh yes, I was told the piece of metal was kept in the grain to use with the auger. Who knew?

Uncle Snide drank (a LOT) and my dad didn't, but Daddy loved to hang out in bars. He often took me with him all through my childhood until I entered adolescence... but that's another story. We'd all go in to town on Saturdays. Uncle Snide and Daddy would be in the bar until it closed or later. Snide liked to fight; Daddy liked to watch; they both loved to entertain the troops as it were. As kids, we were happy to roam all over town until we were tired or cold, then go to the bar and hang out in a booth or fall asleep on the floor until the men were ready to leave. At that time and in that place, no one thought anything of it.

We had few "real" toys. John reminded us of the bicycle with no tires or pedals. You simply drug it up to the high point in the yard, hopped on with legs sticking out sideways and tried to ride it to the bottom. He and Geneva were good at it. I never made it the whole way. We played with old tires, using dirt for gas. If you ran out of gas, you had to drag, not roll, your tire to the gas station. Cousin Dorothy was the gas attendant but it was strictly self-serve. She didn't like getting dirty and never "drove' the dirt tires anywhere. Even in winter, we were outdoors most of the time and having a blast. We worked, and worked hard, but we played all through it. Toys? We had more fun than 20 kids with toys.

Some of the play was a problem, though. When he was younger (before we were there) Frank was using the tractor for a toy horse, and a hammer for as rider's crop (whip). But he was banging on the front of the tractor to make it go... I can't picture it either. Well, he was a strapping youngster and soon knocked a hole in the radiator. Uncle Snide was furious! As John says, "He beat the heck out of Frank every time he saw him. Mom finally hid him for a while."

There's no doubt we came from disfunctional families. Uncle Snide regularly let fly at his dogs with buckshot. He killed a horse that angered him... his favorite horse... and refused to move or dispose of the carcass. He chased me all over the yard and around the barn with the tractor, and when he was angry (and could catch you) he would whip you on and off all day long for whatever you did to anger him. If you were able to keep out of sight, however, he would forget all about it by supper time.

My dad was not violent, but where ever we lived, I never knew when he would wake us all up to pack what we could into the car. We were moving... NOW! We often had less than an hour to get gone. I attended over 50 schools. Sometimes we were squatters and there were times we lived in our car. Other times, we lived in luxury... even lived next door to Alan Ladd for a time (short time). Daddy loved people but had no second thought about skipping out on bills or pulling a con on a company. He even involved me in several of his cons. (AWAT) He "highgraded" gold from the mines he worked in from time to time. My mother found quite a bit of it going through his things after he died. She hid it in his coffin before the funeral. Who says you can't take it with you? LOL.

Mama was agorophobic. Afraid to go out in public. She did make it to part of my high school graduation. I was thrilled! She worried about everything and was bedridden most of the time. She never disciplined us. She cried if we misbehaved. And prayed. She was one of the strongest and most fragile persons I have ever known. (AWAT) More about her in another blog.

Bottom line is the children of the Snider men lived in very unusual and perhaps socially unacceptable households. Besides Uncle Snide and my dad (Ed) there was another Snider brother... Jim. Depending on who you believe, Jim either shot himself or was murdered in the corner booth of a Leadville, CO bar. His wife never remarried and raised their only daughter in a rather normal fashion.

So, all things considered, we Snider kids could have been shaking our heads and feeling pretty abused as we reviewed our pasts together, but instead the room was filled with fun and laughter... and not one of us would trade our childhoods or our parents for more painless, sedate and sensible ones.

None of us hate or blame our parents, either. Our folks made some BIG mistakes, but they are the folks God chose to place us with, and we love them, warts and all. We are who we are today in part because of how we were raised, the good and not-so-good times, the parents who, though far from perfect, gave use life, what love they could and sent us out into the world stronger for it.

I am so thankful for this wonderful day of sharing hugs, memories and love with my kinfolk. Tomorrow, cousin Geneva and I are going to spend some time with cousins twice removed and a generation older than we are. They have precious memories we need to hear, sweet necks we need to hug and some wonderful pancakes we need to eat.