family loyalty

I walked not in the way of righteousness - part four

Dan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:35:42 +0000

Before I begin at my beginning I need to lay one more piece of pipe to my story...Douglas McArthur Parsons - my so called ‘retarded’ brother.
I have learned in life that “Perception is Reality”. What you believe is your ‘truth’.
My Mom and Dad never could perceive Dougy as anything but ‘retarded’. So that is how they treated him. Sadly, since that was the way he was treated - that’s how he acted. Truth is he wasn’t/isn’t/or-ever-will-be ‘retarded’. You see I have a different perception of him. (Confused yet?)
Doug began as the last fling for a G.I. going to the European theater during W.W.II. His birth mother was ‘slow’ mentally and did not understand she was pregnant until about her 8th month. Being ashamed of herself, she then hid it from everybody. Dougy was born in the outhouse, behind the house where she lived. After giving birth, she left him on the floor of the ‘privy’ while she went in the house and got some old rags to clean the mess up. Thinking the baby to be dead, she wrapped him up in the rags (umbilical cord still attached) and put the whole bundle in the trash can in the alley.
Very shortly afterwards, a state social worker was walking up that same alley to visit a family further up the hill, as they say. Thinking she heard a cat squalling, she said to herself that if it was still there on her way back down she would let it out. The family she was going to see was gone so she headed back down the hill. She faintly heard the cat still squalling so she open the trashcan, saw the bloody rags and began looking for the noise maker. She found the baby, barely alive.
She ran the 7 blocks to the hospital with the new born still wrapped in the rags and afterbirth. The nurses and doctor worked frantically to keep him alive.
My Aunt Maud’s youngest child was in the same hospital for care. When Aunt Maud went to see her daughter, she passed by the baby room to look at the newborns and saw a bassinet without a name on it. Asking a nurse about the baby, she learned he had been abandoned and would be up for adoption. On her way home Aunt Maud stopped by to see Momma. She told Momma about the poor little baby and that she was going to adopt him. Being childless, Momma pleaded with her oldest sister to let her adopt the baby boy.
When Momma went back to work after her lunch break, she told Daddy about the little baby that Maud had seen. He promised her that they could go see him after work.
After they finished work, stopped to get a bite of dinner they went to the hospital. When they got to the baby room, Momma looked for the bassinet without a name and didn’t see it. Thinking the worse, she asked a nurse about the abandoned baby boy. The nurse went into the restricted room and consulted the nurse in charge of the babies. That nurse, smiling, came out to talk to Momma and Daddy. She pointed out to them the baby boy they were interested in. The nurses felt bad about calling him “the abandoned boy” or “orphaned boy” or “him” or “it” so they named him after the hero of the day - General Douglas McArthur. The nurse assured them that was only for the benefit of the nurses. They didn’t need to keep that name if they decided to adopt him. The nurse then said that because of the circumstances of his birth he was going to have ‘problems’.
The Parsons’ decided before they got home that they wanted this child. Daddy called the hospital the next day and started the paperwork. A little over two weeks after that, they brought Dougy home. A month later it was finalized and Douglas McArthur Parsons was...
When Dougy-Mac was about 9 months old, they found his “birth mother”. (Which is, in case you were wondering, how we found out the back story of his birth.) She did not want the baby back but had been told that Momma and Daddy owed her money because they adopted him. Daddy did have to restrain Momma or Doug might have been orphaned again. This girl showed up a couple of other times, never interested in Doug, but wanting a handout. Then she stopped coming by. They never saw her again.
Douglas did have problems. It seemed that every illness known to man he dealt with before he was ten years old. Because of his poor care at birth his immune system was very weak. Also, one side of his body is smaller than the other. Other than those two ‘problems’ his physical development was fine. By the time for him to start school came, our parents knew he had a learning ‘problem’. In 1947 there was no special ed, or special learning teachers; if you couldn’t do the work you were ‘retarded’. Thus Dougy was labeled and people quit expecting anything of him - he delivered what they expected.
In 1990 I worked for a special ed boarding school as the lead milieu therapist. As a favor to me, they tested Doug. What they found I knew or suspected all my life. Doug’s verbal I.Q. was within normal range. They could not get a gauge on his written I.Q. because (sarcasm alert) he was ‘retarded’ and could not be taught to write - so why waste valuable time on someone like him. It was discovered that Doug’s reading problem was because he was severely dyslexic. With all the advances they have had in education in the past 25 years, if Doug was born today, under the same circumstances, he could look forward to a normal life.
Doug is a survivor. He made it through his birth, his sickly early life, growing up in Detroit, an alcoholic mother, a passive-aggressive Daddy, and a psychotic brother. He is doing fine.

I walked not in the way of righteousness - part three

Dan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:23:00 +0000

It is about time for a disclaimer. Most of my family’s story is oral history. I have tried to get at least two accounts of incidents. Things I could not confirm by a second witness I regard as lore and have not included it. Besides, could you make some of this stuff up?

My Grandfather, Hiram, is the only Grandparent I met. I saw him twice. The first time he didn’t acknowledge me; the second time he looked at me and said, “Who the h*ll are you?” Daddy proudly claimed me as his son. To which Hiram said, “Just so long as he isn’t mine.” Hiram died in 1965.
My Grandmother on my Daddy’s side was known to the world as ‘Aunt Betty’. Even Daddy called her Aunt Betty. ‘Aunt’ Betty Hamilton loved people and people loved her back; she was everybody’s favorite Aunt. She was older than Hiram when they married. Nobody is sure why she married him, guess it goes back to that old adage - good girls love bad boys! Betty and Hiram had three children: Hogan, the oldest (he died in a coal mine accident when he was 20); a daughter, Melvina and Press, the youngest. After they divorced Aunt Betty married again, but it didn’t last because of her daughter’s resentment toward her new step-father. Betty died in 1943.
All I know about my other Grandmother is that her name was Mary Blankenship Mathews, and she was bi-racial. Her Daddy was a freed slave and her Momma was Cherokee Indian. I would overhear my Mom and her sisters talking about her, but Momma nor my Aunts and Uncle would say anything more than that she was a good, brave lady. She and George Mathews had 5 children (4 daughters and a son): Maud, Beulah (Bootsy), Joe, Myrtle (Momma) and Leo (yes Aunt Leo was a girl). She left George and the children after the KKK burned a cross in their yard. Though she loved her family she didn’t want them hurt, so she left. She never married again and died in the late 1930’s.
George Mathews was a short angry man. He was a doctor, more precisely, a circuit riding doctor. He tended to the coal camps and villages in mountainous Eastern Kentucky. Though he had no formal education, he understood the human body, was a sure hand in surgery and had a very good working knowledge of Homeopathic medicine. All Momma would ever say about his death was that the KKK had shot and killed him.
One day, my Aunt Bootsy went into greater detail, which Momma would confirm before she died. It was one of those hot, sticky Southern Ohio evenings. We had spent the day cutting and hanging the last of the tobacco crop. I was exhausted, we all were exhausted. Dougy had stood in the bed of the trailer handing the sticks filled with tobacco stalks to Kathy. She was standing on a platform of hay about six feet off the ground. She would hand those to Daddy who was standing on a 4 inch pole approx. 10 feet off the ground. He would hold on to the pole above him, reach down, take the stick from her and hand it up to me. I was standing on the 4 inch pole Daddy was holding onto. I would take it from him and hang it between two poles about four feet above my head. Some of these sticks could weigh up to 200 lbs. Like I said we were all exhausted.
Bootsy was staying with us on the farm and had cooked a good ol’ hillbilly meal (let the reader understand this to mean everything was fried in lard until crispy), which, when done right, is absolutely Yum-o (↤ look a Rachel Ray reference!) As Bootsy finished up the dishes, Daddy and Momma were in the living room, a Cincinnati Reds game was on TV; Dougy was sitting in the kitchen watching his TV and Kat and I were sitting at the dining room table talking. Bootsy came in and sat down to join our conversation. At some point she said something about her Daddy. When I told her that I didn’t know much about him, she told me to ask anything I wanted to ask about him and she would do her best to answer it. She didn’t sound surprised that Momma never talked about him. I told her that I wanted to know how he died. Bootsy took a deep breath; it was obvious she felt a little uncomfortable. This is the story she relayed.
She said that it was lunch time, Aunt Maud had just been married a couple of months. She had married a Greek national who had been recruited from Greece to work on the Panama Canal. After it was done he had been recruited again, this time by a mining company to dig coal in Kentucky. They had known each other for a year, but Aunt Maud had to wait until George Mathews had remarried before she could wed. She was 18 years old. The rest of the family was seated around the table eating, when they heard a voice from the yard calling my Grandfather out. Seems the KKK was upset over the fact that he had given a black man a small piece of property. This man worked in a shoe shine shop my Grandfather owned. George gave it to him for his “birthday”. This former slave was the first black to own property in Pike County Kentucky.
Granddad walked across the cabin, picked up his double-barreled shotgun next to the door and stepped out on the porch. Bootsy 17; Joe 16; Momma 14 and Leo 12 went to the windows to watch the confrontation. As George stepped off the porch into the red-dog clay yard, it all broke loose.
The man in the yard fired, missed Granddad and hit the house just above the window where Bootsy and Aunt Leo was standing. There were men in the trees on each side of the yard and one on the roof of the house. This shot seemed more of a signal for the others to start shooting because they did. When Granddad was shot in the back by the man on the house, Uncle Joe and Momma charged from the house; Aunt Bootsy held Aunt Leo and their step-mother back from the door. Uncle Joe, who had a pistol, ran straight to his Daddy and threw himself on top of him to protect him from anymore wounds; it would prove to be too late. Momma jumped on Granddad’s shotgun and unloaded both barrels at the man on top of the house, Bootsy heard the man hit the roof and roll off, then saw him hit the ground - dead. Momma jumped up and ran to were her Daddy had dropped the pouch of shells for the shot gum. She hit the ground, hard, having been shot in the hip with buck shot. She loaded the gun and started looking in the trees for someone to kill. Uncle Joe, who had been shot in the back had unloaded his pistol into the man in the yard, reloaded and was searching the trees also.
When they saw no further movement in the trees, Uncle Joe called for Bootsy and his step-mother. Their step-mom rolled Uncle Joe off of Granddad, and started checking his wounds, Bootsy was trying to check out Momma but she would have nothing of it. She crawled over to her daddy, rolled him over, checked his eyes and slid her lap under his head. By this time Aunt Leo had drawn a bucket of water and lugged it out to Bootsy.
Momma tore a piece off of the bottom of her dress and getting it wet, started wiping the blood and dirt off of her Daddy’s face. He pretty much bled out there in the yard. Bootsy said that he had been hit about 6 times. They were able to get Granddad into the house but he died before 1 o’clock. * * * * *
At this point my Daddy sat straight up in his chair and hollered for Bootsy and Kat. We all ran into the Living room, Bootsy was asking Momma what was wrong. There were tears running down the side of Mommas face.
Bootsy, Kathy and I were there because the doctors had sent Momma home to die. She had one whole lung removed and 2/3’s of the other because of cancer. The chemo had given her another four months but the cancer had become aggressive again. The doctors kept her pretty much sedated. She had not said anything to anybody except Kathy, in the two months she had been home. Through the fog of her pain, drugs and depression she had heard Bootsy’s retelling of the day they lost their dad. The memory of that pain and heartbreak permeated the fog and she was that little girl again, painfully sitting on that hard red-dog clay with the head of her Daddy in her lap, watching him die.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The night before Momma died, she and I had a great conversation. She had come to herself at about 2 AM. She wanted to know why she was in the hospital (pneumonia), and what had been going on. I caught her up on everything. She was truly embarrassed that she had not known any of us, except Kathy.
I asked her about the story Aunt Bootsy had told us. She verified it and added that their step-mother moved out that evening and married the brother of the man that was killed on the roof of the house that day, three days later. She then said they both disappeared two weeks after that and no one ever saw them again. She got a sly look on her face and commented that the “hills hold alot of secrets”. I asked her what she meant by that, she said she would tell me that night when I came back. Momma died around at 4 that afternoon. The hills still hold that secret!!!

I walked not in the way of righteousness - part two

Dan — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:26:10 +0000

My mom and dad married each other on the rebound.

My mom (Nyla Myrtle Mathews) was unceremoniously dumped by her fiancé when he found out her mother (my Grandmother) was bi-racial. My Grandmother’s father was a freed slave and her mother was Cherokee. When that came up in conversation, my momma’s fiancé walked out on her.

My dad (Press Parsons) had been dating my mom’s younger sister for a couple of month’s when he met this sweet little girl for whom he fell head over heels. They planned to marry but her father put a stop to it. He said that daddy was nothing more than poor white trash and forbade her to marry him.

These two events occurred on the same day. Each broken-heart went to their favorite “speak-easy” for a drink (Pike County, Kentucky, where this transpired was and still is dry.). It happened to be the same place. Myrt and Press worked together so they knew each other, not very well, but they were acquainted. After commiserating about their situation for a couple of hours/bottles they decided to show everybody who had wronged them - by getting married. This was a bad idea for two reasons. First of all one should never plot revenge when they are drunk; it is too easy to overlook small and many details. Secondly, they didn’t know each other’s family background.

Let me say quickly, my Daddy wasn’t prejudiced at all. The sweet little girl with the stern daddy I mentioned above was herself black (as was her daddy). Race wasn’t an issue, family loyalty was.

Let’s now back up a generation or two and pick up “my story” were we left off last month.

Most people are aware of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. It captured the nation’s attention in the mid to latter part of the 19th century. The Hatfield clan lived on the West Virginia side of the Tug River Branch and the McCoy’s lived on the Kentucky side. They didn’t like each other (understatement!!). Anderson Hatfield fought for the Confederacy and was the Patriarch of the Hatfield family and Randle McCoy, Patriarch of the McCoy family saw his sons fight for the Union. That was only the foundation. Anderson was a successful timber merchant, Randle tried but, not so much.

That they were both hard, self-sufficient men who played by their own terms should go without saying. That they both raised large wild families to which they were very loyal - oh, yes. I am not trying to defend or make light of these murderous men or there ‘kin’. However the people they were responsible for killing and the other things they did was all a part of who they were and what our country was at the time. This was the Appalachian Mountains!

The Hatfield-McCoy feud ran off and on for nearly 30 years. This is a brief timeline with added history dates for comparison.
1863 *Anderson Hatfield forms guerrilla band. Raids and thefts follow between McCoy’s and Hatfield’s.
*West Virginia statehood.
*President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation (Jan 1).
1865 *First death in feud - Asa Harmon McCoy. No prosecution.
*President Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth (Apr 4). Civil War ends in May.
1871 *Great fire destroys Chicago (Oct 8-11).
1876 *"Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain is published.
1877 *Ulysses Simpson Grant is elected president.
1878 *Randolph McCoy accuses Floyd Hatfield of stealing his pig. Bill Staton's testimony in court later wins for Floyd Hatfield.
*The first commercial telephone exchange opens in New Haven, CT, (Jan 28).
1880 *Bill Staton murdered by Paris and Sam McCoy in June.
*Sam McCoy tried in September for Staton death; acquitted.
*Randle’s daughter Roseanna McCoy and Anderson’s son Johnse Hatfield meet.
*She leaves to live with him at Hatfield cabin.
1881 *Roseanna returns home, and then moves to aunt's cabin where Johnse is captured by McCoy boys. Roseanna's ride to Anderson's saves Johnse's life.
*Pregnant Roseanna returns to Randle's home, catches measles, miscarries baby, then moves to Pikeville.
*Johnse marries her cousin Nancy McCoy on May 14.
1882 *Ellison Hatfield fatally wounded by Bud, Tolbert and Pharmer McCoy on August 9.
*After Hatfield dies, the trio is tied to bushes and executed.
*Jeff McCoy killed on banks of the Tug.
1883 *The Brooklyn Bridge opens (May 24).
1887 *Kentucky governor appoints Frank Phillips to capture the McCoy boys' murderers.
1888 *New Year's Day raid on Randle McCoy's cabin leaves Alifair and Calvin dead, home burned to ground.
*Roseanna McCoy, less than 30 years old, dies in Pikeville
1889 *Trial of Hatfield clan in McCoy murders begins.
*Johnstown, Pa., flood 2,200 lives lost (May 31).
1890 *Ellison Mounts executed for Alifair McCoy's murder. (Feb 18).
*Ellis Island opens (Dec 31).

So what does any of this have to do with my Momma and Daddy?
About two weeks after they were married, Momma and Daddy were sitting around the breakfast table before work when it came out in conversation that...well, let me first say that Frank Phillips (the man mentioned above in 1887) won the parole of 6 young men who were in prison: four for various crimes; two were on death row in Fort Knox (before the gold) for committing murder. He formed a posse with these men and they acted as special Marshall’s for the State of Kentucky. Their sole purpose was to hunt down Hatfield’s and bring them to trial (wink, wink).
One of those men Phillips got from Fort Knox was a 20 year old named Hiram, ‘Hi’ to his few friends. He was a wretched son from a righteous family. In fact he had three brothers and they would become preachers; two Baptist and one Christian Church. When he was 19 he walked into a Saloon and gunned down two men in cold blood and the first Lawman to make the scene. He never said why, ever (he lived to be 81). He sat silent at his trial and his first words came after he was sentenced to death; when he threatened to kill the judge and jury. This angry, 20 year old murderer was Hiram Parsons, my grandfather. Even though my Daddy was not proud of his father, he idolized Frank Phillips. Phillips himself had spent time in an Oklahoma jail for robbery and attempted murder. Daddy had a love for “the Old West”, that wasn’t really that old when he was a boy. Daddy said that Phillips had that Cowboy presence about him. I really didn’t understand that until we moved to New Mexico.
My Momma, on the other hand...was the Great-Niece of Anderson Hatfield. She despised anything McCoy; she was brought up believing that the only good McCoy was one you could brag about shooting! She despised Frank Phillips, and those associated with him. She hated - because she was raised to and until the day she died, she was a loyal member of the Hatfield clan.
LET THE FEUD CONTINUE!!!!
From that point on, Momma and Daddy never quite got along. They cared for each other, loved each other, but fought almost all the time. That was the first thing that came between Press and Myrtle Parsons - Family Loyalties. This is a recurrent theme in “my story”. Momma was very loyal to her brothers and sisters to the harm of her marriage relationship and the relationship she had with her sons, especially me. Daddy felt that kind of loyalty to Momma but not to any of his blood kin, except for Doug and me.
My early life was a lot of Daddy saying “How high?” on his way up; then complaining about it behind Momma’s back. Not that he necessarily complained about jumping as much as not being appreciated for it. Momma’s family always came first, over me and Daddy (Dougy was a different matter). That was something that was hard to reconcile in my head. I was her son, the child she was told she could never have; even at a very young age I knew she should be taking care of me instead of my cousins. I couldn’t understand why they were more important than I. It got down to the fact that I was a Parsons, the grandson of Hiram, who rode with Frank Phillips, who rounded up Hatfields. I never had a chance!

Next - a story Momma would never tell me and my grandmother - Aunt Betty!

"I walked not in the way of righteousness.But the Almighty God, who sits in the court of heaven, granted what I did not deserve." - Constantine (280-337)