HOW SHARON AND BUTCH CAME TO LIVE WITH US

HOW SHARON AND BUTCH CAME TO LIVE WITH US

As I mentioned in "The Little Green House," my dad's oldest sister, Ruth, committed suicide. She had lived a hard life, having been through the depression, living in a bad neighborhood, and without a good upbringing. She hated her 6'1" height so she stooped a little to look shorter. By today's standards she could have been a a model. She was definitely pretty. She married a man with whom she had two kids and then he went his own way. 

Ruth had been raised hanging out in the bars with her mother, her mother's men friends, and immoral and sometimes violent kinfolk. She took up drinking herself and eventually became an alcoholic. She and the kids had to escape the men she would take up with to keep the men from beating her and possibly the kids. The daughter, Sharon, remembers hiding while they were being chased. When Ruth was in one of her drunken stupors she would let Sharon and Butch, the son, run free around town, oftentimes hungry. They were pre-school age. We would go visit them in Benton, Illinois, and would see Sharon and Butch on the roundabout looking at tv's in the store windows. They were watching the tv shows. They wore little clothing. 

They were reported, the state got wind of it, and Ruth was sent a letter saying her children were to be taken away from her. She loved her children even as an alcoholic and couldn't bear the thought of losing her kids, so she took a gun, went into the outhouse and shot herself. Dad's twin sister, Edna, found her. The story goes that Ruth wasn't quite dead when Edna found her, so when Edna went for help, Ruth shot herself again. That's how Sharon and Butch came to live with us. Sharon cried at night for years because she missed her mother. She wanted to be with her mother in spite of the life they lived.