I Remember

                              I Remember



    They were William Luther and Floye Jean Riggan.  They were my parents as well as the parents of my four siblings. They were brought up during one of the darkest hours in the history of our nation," Th e Great Depression ".  They were members of the " Greatest Generation That Ever Lived " and fought the war to end all wars.
    For several years now I have had difficulty with my feelings for my parents. They brought me into this world and because of them I am the person I am today. I was proud to be their son but there were times I was embarrassed by them.  I wanted to run away but couldn't wait to get home. There were good times and not so good times and I remember them all. 
    Dad was born June 30,1923.  He came from a farming family in Wilson County, Tn.  Lagardo was nothing more than a spot on a dirt road back then - today it is a spot on a paved road.  Other than the fact that a few city slickers have moved in, not much has changed.
    Mom was born August 8,1926.  Her father was in management for the manufacturing of shoes. Grandpa Wade worked in several states but lived a large part of the time in Gallatin, Tn.
     Times were hard then - money and jobs were in short supply. If you had anything you took care of it.  If you had nothing you worked to get what you wanted - nobody gave you anything.  Back then families were tight knit.  Everyone did their part for the betterment of the family.  Discipline could be hard but that was the way things were done then.
    Mom, as the story goes, had eyes for one of Dad's older brothers but the fickled finger of fate had a different idea. The whole world went crazy and erupted into WWII. At the age of 19, Dad quit school and joined the Navy in 1942.  Before he shipped out he and Mom were married - August 16, 1942, nine days after she turned 16. ( Sister Vickie recently found their marriage license in Kentucky.  They lied about their ages - Mom's lie was bigger than Dad's as they both claimed to be 21 ).
    When Dad came back from the war he was like many of the time.  He had dropped out of school to enlist so now he's considered uneducated, unskilled and unemployed, and he had picked up a new habit - he drank. Mom or Granny Wade ( they were both there ) told me of the time Dad came home drunk and Mom had locked him out so he kicked the door in and told Mom there would never be locked doors in his house. Dad was not what I call a mean drunk he was actually very mellow.  He would just get easily irritated.
    Dad found work on the Great Lakes.  The pay was good, the future was bright, and he only worked about 6 months out of the year. Mom evidently didn't want to move north away from family so sometime after Pat was born Dad came back home to drive a cab until he learned the butcher trade. He found his spot in life as a butcher - and a damn good one too.
    Over an eleven year period ( 1947 - 1958 ) Mom gave birth to four boys and one girl. Little brother Ronnie brought up the rear when we lived in a four room house on Colonial Circle. I think at this point Dad was still trying to prove himself as a butcher and Mom was struggling to be a house wife of the time. We kids had no idea how tough things were.  We were kids who played, ate and slept but being the oldest I can remember some of the problems.
    Mom suffered from pleurisy a medical condition she acquired giving birth to me ( so I was told ) so she spent time in bed and brother Pat and myself learned to cook, iron clothes and help with the washing and cleaning ( we never could make biscuits ). Dad was the bread winner and the reining thought of the time was that he deserved to relax with a few cold ones and a couple of buddies when he felt like it. This lead to marriage problems between Mom and Dad. When I was 10 or 11, Mom sat us kids down and talked with us about how we needed to be good and not upset Dad or he might not want to come home anymore. At the time none of us really understood the situation.  We didn't know that heavy drinking was a problem because most of the people that our parents knew had a drinking problem.   We must have improved because Dad stayed.
    In spite of the problems we had good times. Dad would spend a Sunday taking us swimming in the river beneath Stones River bridge or he would check Pat and I out of school on his half day off to take us fishing at Stones River. I have no idea what he told the school we were going to do, it was hard to hide the fact that we were going fishing because the car had several long cane poles sticking out the rear windows. Mom would make matching clothes for the whole family and we would wear them to see the grand parents on Sunday.  Everybody marveled at Moms handy work.
    Life changed for me about the age of 13.  I was no longer a child but rather a teenager.  I was still a mamma's boy but I was also growing into someone that Dad could have fun with. Dad was the one who got me the job at C&S and for a long time I relished in the fact that I was Bill's son and was introduced to people as such. I got to hang out with Dad after work when he would go see Grady, his bootlegger. Though some things changed, some things stayed the same.  I was the oldest and I was supposed to set the example for the other kids to follow.
     I guess that at times I was a disappointment, or so it seemed.   I got whippings for bad grades, not cutting the grass on time, stepping in a mud puddle, smoking, or talking back, I even got whipped for telling the truth. Usually Dad would use a belt but would, on occasion, grab whatever happened to be handy, yard sticks, lawn mower starter cords, and switches. A couple of times Mom had to pull Dad off of me but then the next day or two later we were running a trot line or he is showing me how to drive - all is forgotten. The last time we had a confrontation I was about 17.  I was late coming home from a friends house and he threw me against the brick siding of the house and pulled back his fist and threatened to beat hell out of me, I told him to go ahead but I would not be there in the morning.
    Mom was the typical 50's housewife.  She didn't know how to drive and I doubt she knew how much money Dad made. Bra burning was still years away and birth control was something called the rhythm method or condoms. Her job was to stay at home and take care of the kids, clean the house, do the laundry, and have food on the table regardless what time Dad came home ---  barefoot and pregnant, no arguing. Mom did things with us on a daily basis.  She was the first thing we saw when we woke up and quite often the last thing we saw at bedtime.  She made clothes for us and taught us how to cook, wash /iron and even sew buttons on a shirt.
    When we lived in Mt Juliet, she and I pulled a toy wagon up the hill and loaded it with concrete blocks from the foundation of a burned house.  We lined the drive with them, filled the cavity with dirt and planted flower seeds in them. Come Mothers Day, Dad would stop on the way home so I could buy Mom a 1 day fishing permit and 2-3 doz minnows.  The next morning we walked to the creek and fished until the minnows were gone.
     Back then boys could, and quite often did, have issues with their dad but never with their Mom. This was the situation with me. Mom was fun and after I left home again in my thirties and started working all over the country we would have her visit with us in California, Florida and Georgia. Linda and I took her to Disney World, the beach, and the mountains and we had fun. I over looked the issues that she had for years and were now starting to grow larger as she got older.  She was my mother and I was her oldest son - her first born. I am told that she cared more for me than my brothers or sister, it was often hard for me to feel that love,I would have traded that position for hug.
    Mom's biggest problem was that she had to always keep things stirred up among her kids.  One week she would be down on Ronnie, the next Vickie or Clint. She never knew what I was up to because I lived in another state but when she came home from visiting with us we became the target for a short time. It all came to a head when she developed a hatred for Clint's girl friend.  I defended Clint's right love the woman of his choice.  I defended that right so vehemently that I didn't speak to Mom for almost 5 years - until shortly before her death.
     Ironically, Mom had always complained about Granny Riggan always keeping things stirred up and said on several occasions that if she ever got like Granny Riggan we could just shoot her. The problem with Granny was that she was old and lonely, shuffled from son to daughter to son and back again, wandering aimlessly in a world that had little time or use for her.
    The saddest thing of all was that Mom had five kids who wanted to take care of her and love her and make her last days happy ones.  Instead she distanced herself from most of us and robbed herself and us of what should have been the best days of her life. Maybe this was due to some malady of the aging process that could have been controlled.  Maybe she was just ticked off with her life because things didn't turn out as she had hoped for.  I don't know but I miss the old Mom.
    Dad on the other hand turned things around as he got older. When he was in his early fifties his drinking had reached the place where it was all he thought about.  He always kept a bottle at home, in the car, and in the cooler at work and every night he would stop and pick up a fresh one because one of his bottles was going to go empty. Now he had switched from bourbon to vodka and when I would come over to take him fishing on Sunday morning the first thing he would do was take a long swig to clear his head.  Fishing didn't last long because I was afraid he might fall out of the boat.
    One night he came home three sheets in the wind and threw Vickie and her boyfriend out and hurt Mom in the process.  I was called and went to check on Mom, Vickie and Clint and that was when things got nasty. To make a long story short I called Dad every name I had ever heard of and chewed him up one side and down the other, my words were vicious and meant to cut deep. In the long run, it was a doctor that got Dad off the bottle, he told him if he wanted to bounce grand kids on his knee he would need to quit drinking.
    Dad joined AA and was mentored, as he said, by guys he had known for years but didn't know they had a problem. He had to be sober for a certain period of time before he acknowledged his problem and when the day came Mom called me to say that Dad wanted me go with him to his meeting. I watched as he stood at the podium and announced to the world " Hi, my name is Bill and I am an alcoholic ". He regaled his audience with stories of his drinking days, it was both funny and sad to listen to.  He finished his presentation by saying " people used to say there goes Bill the ol' drunk, now they say there goes Bill the alcoholic ".  He said it with pride and I was proud of him.
    Sadly I could only enjoy his sobriety for a few years as I felt the grass tickling the bottom of my feet and the urge to reach out for a better life was overwhelming.  Linda and I moved to Florida then California and Kansas.
     During a trip home I discovered that Dad was drinking again.  He said he had an irritation in his throat and the liquor soothed the pain.  He was afraid to go to the doctor for fear of what he might find. I told him the doctor might be able to fix the problem but he had to go see him first. A few months later I stood at his bedside and closed his eye lids, then I sat on the floor and cried like a baby.  The cancer that started in his throat had spread through out his body.  He was 62 and looked 90.
    Something that bothers me till this day is that I can't remember being told " I love you or you did good or I'm proud of you ".  Sentiment was not freely expressed. There were times when I knew they cared, I watched Dad cry as the bus pulled away taking me to my first duty station.  He sobbed when I brought him a watch for Xmas, and Mom said he cried in his beer the night before Linda and I moved into our first house across town.  Family members and people who were not family would tell me that Mom and Dad loved me more because I was the first born.  It bothers me to think they may have loved my siblings less because of their birth order, I would have given up the first position for a hug.
    I said in the beginning that it was only recently that I have started to understand my parents. Over the last few years when I get together with my brothers and sister the subject of Mom and Dad will come up and conjectures will bounce around the room. Some think it was WWII or that they married so young.  Maybe it was their up bringing or the changing times of the late forties and  fifties.  I doubt that we will ever know the reasons they turned out as they did. What I do know is that they raised four sons and a daughter and we all turned out pretty good.  They can be proud of us.
    They did the best they could, I miss them and love them.