Part 2 - Hazel's Life in the 1940's and 1950's

Mom took care of Don and I through our toddler years, but went back to work at the Globe factory in Kokomo before the war ended. The factory made parachutes, and was only four or five blocks from the house. I still remember the factory whistle sounding its sad low tone at noon every day.

She ironed clothes at Riggs Dry Cleaners shop for several years in the early fifties. It was a true sweat shop in a small building behind the Riggs’ house. We picked her up at 5pm in the evening and the shop was sometimes so hot that I could not stay inside. She took some courses at the local business school, typing and bookkeeping, and went to work for the Moose Lodge as Dad’s assistant in 1953. She worked in the Moose office until she retired some twenty years later.

Mom was five feet two and weighed 108 pounds. I’m not certain why I remember such an exact weight, but it has stuck in my mind these many years. She was slim, and had auburn colored hair. When I was young she had rounded shoulders; the condition would be diagnosed as scoliosis nowadays. The rounded shoulders became more pronounced as the years passed. Near the end of her life her back was curved into a classic hunchback. It came about so gradually that I don’t think it much concerned her.

Her private time was early in the day. I remember hearing her pad around the house at four and five on many a morning. She had two or three hours to herself, and I still don’t know what she was doing, not for certain. The Kokomo Tribune, like many newspaper of its day, was an evening edition, so she had no morning paper to read. She made coffee, and probably did some light house cleaning, or laundry, but mostly, I think it was simply a private time for her. The rest of the family was up by seven, had breakfast, and on our way to work or school by eight.

We gathered at home again around five or six. Grandma Frank usually made supper, and by seven the dishes were done and Mom laid down on the living room couch to watch some television. Sometimes, early on, she would spoon with Dad as he lay at the back of the couch and she cradled in front. Other times she crashed alone, but she invariably fell asleep and missed most of the nights TV shows. She’d awake, sleepy eyed, about ten or eleven and go off to bed. Five or six hours later the pattern would repeat, and you could again hear quiet padding about the house.

Mom was a smoker. I don’t know when she started, but I suspect she began in her teens. She came from tobacco country, and I expect she saw nearly everyone around her smoking while she was growing up. Phillip Morris cigarettes were her choice when I was young, and later she switched to Kools and Salems. As a kid I heard her hacking cough almost every morning. She smoked to nearly the end of her life, but emphysema eventually destroyed her lungs.

A low point for the family came the year after I graduated from high school. Dad had an affair with a divorced woman who was affiliated with the Moose Lodge. Mom got suspicious and had me drive her by the woman’s house on more than one occasion. One night, as we drove through the alley behind the house Mom spotted Dad’s car in the drive way.

She had me stop and then left the car, picked up a board in the offending woman's yard and broke a window in the back of her house. She then proceeded around the house smashing one window after another. I watched in stunned disbelief as Mom sent shock waves of smashed glass resounding through the neighborhood. I had only a vague notion as to why she was having me drive her, and no idea about what she planned to do. Dad came out about the time she reached the front. He put her in his car and drove away.

 A day or so later two police officers stopped by at midnight with a warrant and took her to jail. It was the worst time our family ever had. I felt used by Mom for dragging me into it, and I was angry at Dad for the betrayal. It was not pleasant around the house for a while, and I never did hear the outcome. I assume someone in the family paid for the broken windows. I do not love them any less for what happened. There was a lot more good than here ever was bad.
GO TO: Part 3 - Hazel's Life After Dad died in 1985