Mom always claimed she would never live long enough to see Halley’s Comet, but 1986 came and went, and she was still here. She said she would never make the Millennium, and proved herself right on that one - she died Cinco De Mayo, 1999. Mom often saw the darker side of things, so her prediction of an early death, at 85, was understandable. She was a nice person, even gentle, but her outlook was fatalistic. She accepted life as something of which she had little control, but was frustrated by her powerlessness. Mom often groused against the injustices and stupidities of the world, and she especially loved to hate politicians.
Happiness is a phoenix with a short life span. There were many times when she was buoyed with a smile or laughing at a joke. She loved to play Euchre and I remember her sitting in a foursome at the Moose Lodge on many occasions. She worked crossword puzzles, and read lots of books. She could be on a high for weeks, but the mythical bird of happiness would eventually crash and burn. She did not plunge into an emotional darkness, but simply leveled off flat after a shallow dive. A lot of people who are depressed can be irritable but it wasn't her way. I never recognized it then but now realize she probably suffered mild depression most of her life.
Mom was born in a railroad car in eastern Kentucky on September 17, 1913. She went by Hazel Mae Frank, but her birth certificate indicated that she was "Mary Frank". She didn't know why that name was on it, and was never given an explanation. Mom once told me that she always felt like an outsider in her own birth family.
She had three older brothers, Art, Charlie and Joe. The family returned to Catawba Kentucky shortly after she was born. It was her parents hometown, and both their families still lived there. Her maternal grandparents, Charles and Julia Jacobs, died the year before she was born, but her Pop’s parents, George and Mary Frank, were still alive.
She grew up dirt poor because her Pop too often drank up his paycheck. He had a good job with the railroad, but was a bit crazy and several of Mom’s stories about his escapades are hair raising. Catawba was an L&N Railroad creation. There wasn’t much to it then, and it’s not even a ghost town now. The old town is gone, the Jacobs family home was razed years ago, and there is new house sitting where it stood. Their graves lay in a far corner of its backyard.
The family left Catawba in about 1919 and spent a couple years outside Cincinnati before moving on to Connersville, Indiana when she was nine. She quit school after her sophomore year, and was working at the Auburn Auto Company when she met Dad in 1935. They married in June of 1936 and moved to Kokomo, Indiana the following year
GO TO: Part 2 - Hazel's Life in the 1940's and 1950's
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