601 SOUTH 19TH STREET

601 SOUTH 19TH STREET

There are many stories that could be told while Mom and Dad lived in that house which we often visited. The twins, Jamie and Casey lived there longer than "the big kids." Casey attended SIU after graduating high school. Jamie married her boss. Marilyn married a soldier and Carolyn married a rural boy from Bluford. Butch went off to the Viet Nam War. John and I were pursuing his college degree. Linda and Ron moved to Belleville and Sharon and Frankie moved to Carbondale. Marilyn's husband went to war also. He and Butch were never the same afterwards but in different ways. 

Larry died while on the job at the age of 43. He had been around agent orange in the war and it is believed that is the reason Marilyn miscarried four times. Butch saw his buddy blown up and he never got over it. Jamie's husband, Dale, was in the Navy. He was spat upon when he got back to the states. Viet Nam was an unpopular war but those against the war weren't as educated and caring as they presented themselves to be. Many were hippies who were in a fog most of the day and had no morals.

Blog Bites:

• Jamie tells the story of how she and Carolyn were sitting at the kitchen table around 11:30-11:45 pm waiting for Ed to pick Carolyn up when he got off work. It was summer so the main back door was open but there was a screen door. Suddenly they heard Dad's car start and off it went down Logan Street. They called the police and luckily the police found the car the next day. The guy's name that stole the car was Bucky. His excuse for stealing the car was he was going to be late getting home and he didn't want to have his probation revoked. So he stole a car to keep from getting his probation revoked. Duh.
• Some young men were being disrespectful toward Mom outside one day so Dad threw them over a fence. They ran as fast as they could while one was screaming, "Run, he's going to kill us." Dad had heart surgery not too long before that. 
• I was visiting at Mom and Dad's with Diana, a baby, when we had an earthquake. Mom screamed thinking the furnace was going to explode and Dad chewed her out. The twins were in the car. It was 6.4 on the rector scale. 
• Dad and Donald went fishing one day and came home after dark at a time when Mom didn't expect them. She looked out the window but couldn't tell who they were. She went upstairs and opened a window and shouted "I've got a gun and I know how to use it." She had no gun and didn't know how to use it if she did have one. 
• Mom and her sister, Ginny, went fishing one day. While fishing Mom decided to put a weight on her fishing line. She bit down on the weight to close it over the line. She got her tongue in it also and couldn't get it out. They decided to walk back to the car and head for home where she could get out of her predicament. They had to cross a field and climb over a barbed wire fence while Mom was holding the pole with the weight stuck to her tongue. When they got to the car it occurred to them that all they had to do was cut the line. 
• Marilyn's later-to-be husband, Larry Cockrum, was driving in the area of Miller Lake one day when his truck broke down. He pulled over to the side of the road and had to leave the truck there until he could get it fixed or towed. Some of the high school students decided to do some partying at the nearby Jaycee Lake. One of the students, being one of the best students, who was never before a party girl got drunk and while driving home drunk she hit Larry's truck and was killed. I included this story because it's a lesson to our young ones that giving in to peer pressure isn't worth it.
• Dad was somewhat prejudice but swore he wasn't. Regardless, he always had compassion for those he thought might be hungry, so he took fresh-caught fish, probably blue gill, to a small house with a lot of kids. Among them was a little boy named Jyron Oliver. He was very friendly and had a big smile. Dad got to know them well enough
  
  that Jyron was calling Dad Uncle Buck. Fast forward a decade or so when my granddaughter, Hope, was working at Kroger. She was a runner so one of the guys that she worked with would run with her. They eventually became best friends and still are. They were comparing notes one day and Hope's friend and co-worker asked if her Great Grandpa used to give people fish. As it turned out, her co-worker and best friend was Jyron. God works in mysterious ways.
• I worked at WMIX my senior year of high school under the Office Occupations program. Half a day at school and the other half on the job. The owner of WMIX back then was John R. Mitchell who owned and founded the Mitchell Museum. I had to take dictation from him over the phone and he had a fake New York accent. The letterhead cost about a dollar a page. I had to make a carbon copy. There were no copiers back then. It was extremely stressful. One of the salesmen had me writing commercials. He put a page on my desk one day and told me to see what I could do with that. He loved the outcome and wanted me to do more, if not all of his commercials. That didn't last too long, though, because I graduated high school, got married and moved away to Milligan College just outside of Johnson City, Tennessee on the far east side of the state.
• Dad took "Little John" and Adam Dale fishing with him one day. I was apprehensive about them going because they were both so young but I relented. I counted every minute they were gone and the minutes got longer and longer. A storm came up so I was really worried then. They still didn't come to Mom and Dad's house anytime soon so I was near frantic. Finally they came straggling through the door. I asked Little John if they got caught in a storm and he said "Yes." I then asked if he was afraid. He said "No." I asked if water got in the boat and he replied "Yes, but we just poured it out with buckets." The car was on the far side of the lake. I don't think Adam was too scared either. They both trusted their Papa.
• 601 S. 19th was full of short stories, like when there was a window peeper looking in the living room window and the twins drove by and saw him. There was also a chimney fire. A fire engine had to come and put it out. The most I remember about the fire is that my old 45 rpm records were on a closet shelf and were melted. It sure could have been a lot worse so I didn't get upset.

Mom and Dad spent their final years living at 515 S. 19th St. They hadn't lived there very long until their former house at 601 S. 19th burned down.