Spotts history by Vera Spotts Tilton
Bart
caused a lot of friction between he and Mom and the tempers would
flair. Let's face it; he was the number one worse father. I don't
remember him ever saying a kind word about my Dad an encouraging word
to him. When he was drunk he would call Dad, "Floyd my bastard
Son".
One of my most favorite stories about my Grandpa Spotts was when I
was about six. Spring time in
<st1:State><st1:place>Illinois</st1:place></st1:State> was a rainy
time; roads would become a muddy mess so the car would be left at Mc
Mahan's which was about a half mile from my Grandparents home. The
area was low rolling hills and at the bottom of Mc Mahan hill was a
bridge that crossed a small stream that ran into a pool. Most of
this area was pasture land.
At this time Grandpa was working as a carpenter in the near by town
of <st1:City><st1:place>Mt Vernon</st1:place></st1:City>. On
Fridays, grandpa's payday, he and his buddies would go drinking at a
pub in the town near us. By the time he left; his walking ability
would be questionable. Of course according to him his driving ability
never diminished. About half way home in an area called Denton
Hollow was a filling station with a restaurant and bar. He couldn't
ever drive past this place with out stopping, so after five or six
boiler makers he would head home again.
One Friday for some reason he headed home before dark. The Mc Mahns
were sitting on the porch watching Grandpa trying to get home. This
was probably their entertainment for the month. He left his car and
started walking down the road toward home. About half way home he
staggered into the barrow ditch and lost his footing. He had to
wallow and claw his way up onto the road, which he landed face first
on. Now he was at the bridge and some how fell over the side into
the little pool, now of course he had to crawl up the bank and again
get his footing, which took numerous tries. Finally he wondered into
the pasture and had to cross two barb wire fences. The second fence
he crossed into the pig pen at his house. Grandma Mom and I were
watching him from the porch when he swung his leg over the wire, lost
his footing, caught the seat of his pants on the top wire and slipped
over the fence. When he fell he ended up under the fence but his
pants were still hooked to the wire. He didn't move for few minutes
so I ask if he was dead. Grandma said "Yes dead drunk". He started
trying to unhook his pants without getting up, but that didn't work
so he scooted, kicked yelled and slid till he finally made it up, on
the wrong side of the fence and facing away from the house and
missing most of the fabric from the seat of his pants. Then he turned
and stood, swaying and looking at the fence for a while. Finally he
lay down on his belly and scooted under the fence, through the hog
wallow across the pig pen and to the gate. He stumbled and fell the
rest of the way to the house. His glasses were so covered with mud
that they were useless. He had lost his hat and lunch box, his shirt
and one shirt sleeve was torn as was the seat and one knee of his
pants. Before us now stood a mud ball, a very stinky mud ball. From
the top of his head to his feet was a solid sheet of mud. His first
remark was "What's for dinner? Grandma made him wash and change on
the porch. He complained that a working man should get more respect
and be able clean up in his own house. It took quite a few buckets
of water to get him washed up.
One time Grandpa brought a matching pair of dapple gray mares home he
named them Maude and Babe, they were huge work horses. I don't know
why he bought them, he never worked the farm. The most farming he
did was a garden and maybe five acres of corn. The rest of the time
they were pets for Bob and me. We thought they were great, we'd
stand on the manger just to pet them and try to brush them. Ever so
often we would get to ride them but we were like two pimples on their
backs. They were so wide we couldn't any thing but sit on to of
them.
One thing about Grandpa, regardless of how drunk he was on Sunday
night, he was up Monday morning and went to work. He was a union
carpenter so when he turned sixty-five they made him retire.
One Christmas day announced that he was going to quit drinking. No
one believed him but he never took another drink. I was home baking
cookies for every ones lunches. They were pecan with chocolate
icing. Grandpa and Grandma came over that day. He started eating
the cookies, which surprised me because the only sweets I'd ever seen
him eat was cherry pie, never chocolate. He ate so many that Grandma
got after him. The next morning around six A.M. Grandpa had a heart
attack. I got to the hospital around seven thirty but he was gone.
The Doctor told Mom and me that he had a number of small heart
attacks but the booze had thinned his blood.
Grandma Spotts was born into a mining family. She was the youngest
of four. They lived in a settlement where the mine owned the town.
Everyone worked for the mine, they owned your home, they owned the
grocery store, and they decided if the town needed Churches or
Schools. When Grandma was five or six her dad died of black lung.
She went to school through the third grade.
Mom told me that my first Christmas tree was stolen. She and Dad
went into the neighbors woods, these woods belonged to an older
woman, Miss Effie and she didn't like people. When they found the
tree they wanted and had cut it down a man came up to them and ask
what they were doing. Mom told him that Miss Effie said they could
get a Christmas tree. The stranger took the tree. Later Dad snooped
around and found that the man was living in the woods.
Our Christmas tree was always decorated with popcorn and cranberries,
I was seven or eight before we had a string of lights, and you see
it's hard to have lights with no electricity.
How in the world did I get old enough to be a great grandmother or
have a married grand-son? I swear I've not been on this Earth that
long. The thing is I remember Grandma Spotts saying the same thing
and I thought she was crazy.
I was born to Floyd and Doris Spotts in Bonnie Illinois at my
Grandparents home, the Spotts farm. Mom told me it had rained for
ten days before I was born. The road was a muddy mess so Dad road a
horse to the highway and phoned the doctor from the filling station.
He brought the doctor to the house. Dad paid him with a wiener pig.
I was named Vera Maxine Spotts. Do you know what a mouth full that
is for a little girl? It came out Bera Masse Potts. Brother Jim
called me Jera until he was five. V is a hard letter for children to
say, so it comes out Bera, Lera or Jera. Then there is Spotts,
people didn't believe a very freckled face girl would have a name
like spots.
So they would say Scotts, or Cox. They didn't believe that I said or
wrote it correctly. The real problem with my name Vera was that my
father had a cousin Vera. Dad thought she was very pretty so I got
her name. The family didn't like it one little bit. In fact Mom
said Grandpa and Grandma would try to call me Maxine at first. When
I was about eighteen months old we moved to Bonnie. Little did I
know we would move ten or twelve times before I turned sixteen? I
went to eight schools, three of them in third grade. The only thing
I learned that year was that I was an outsider. My dad was in the
Navy and World War two was declared. In all three schools I started
to make friends and get settled then we would move. In first grade I
went to a one room school house named Hungry Hill, the only thing I
remember about it was I had a really grown up, I could walk one and a
half miles to school without mom walking me. What I didn't
understand was that I couldn't go to Grandma Story's by my self and
that was only a mile. Go figure.
From there we moved to
<st1:City><st1:place>Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>, what a shock!
Bob and I had only lived in the country or a small town with eight or
ten houses. Mom left us at a cemetery then went to look at a one
room apartment. The apartment manager asked her if she had any
children. Mom told him "yes two, they are in the cemetery". We got
the apartment, she had looked for weeks but no one wanted kids, you
could have pets, just no kids. We only stayed there for three days,
not because of moms trick but because the first night we went to bed,
as soon as the lights went off the bugs were crawling the walls.
They came out of the light fixtures and from behind the wall paper.
The beds were full of bed bugs, and for some reason they didn't
bother Mom or Bob. Dad and I looked like we had measles; thank God
Mom found us another place.
This place was a lot nicer; it was a block from the "L" an over head
rail system. When the L would go by the windows would rattle and the
whole building would shake. Being a kid I soon got use to it and I
enjoyed watching it fly by.
Then came my night mare, School started. We lived six blocks from
school, on a busy street so Mom would walk me. This school about six
hundred kids and it scared the hell out of me. I had never seen that
many kids in one place before, ever. So at recess I went outside and
stood by my self. You know I don't remember learning anything that
year. One day they had a fire drill; so the teacher made me go
through a door I had never gone out of before. Then she told us to go
home so here I am, not knowing where I am or which way to go. I
tried to go back in but the door was locked. I was too scared to
move so being a seven year old I did the normal thing. I sat there
and cried as loud as possible. Finally Mom found me and took me
home. The stupid thing was All I had to do was walk around the
corner. When I got older she liked to tease me about that.
I only went to this school of horrors for a couple of months when Bob
and I got whooping cough, no fun! I can remember how hard, bad and
painful that cough was, and I couldn't hardly breathe. Mom took us
to a doctor but we were getting worse. She would take us out side
for walks hoping we could get fresh air. This is hard to do in
<st1:City><st1:place>Chicago</st1:place></st1:City> in the
wintertime. Every building around was heated with coal, and the sky
was always gray. All of the smoke was rolling around and blowing in
the cold wind. We were loosing weight, we couldn't keep anything
down, we were dehydrated and we couldn't sleep. After two weeks of
being sick Mom took us to Grandma Story's. Mom said at this point
she thought we wouldn't make it. Our rescue was Grandma, coal oil,
and good fresh air. What a combination Huh. Grandma gave us a
teaspoon of sugar with coal oil every three hours around the clock.
We also drank mint tea and chicken broth.
Grandpa would sit on the back porch with us telling us stories. Here
we were all bundled up in wool coats hats and scarves and snow
pants. The coal oil is a powerful expectorant. It took us a week
before we were able to eat solid food or sleep through the night. We
didn't go back for a week or so after that giving us time to get
stronger, with all of that good country air and farm cooking.
We moved again, Mom got a job managing a small apartment house, which
was great because we had a small back yard to play in. I had to
start in another School after missing two months, then in a couple of
weeks it was Christmas break so I spent the rest of the school year
playing catch up. We were at a friend of my folk's house when they
announced World War two on the radio. I can remember Bob and I
sitting there watching and listening to all the uproar. The women
were crying and the men were cussing and some crying. Soon people
were in the street yelling and crying. The two of us weren't sure
what a war was, except for John Wayne and the Indians. What we were
sure of was that we should be crying so we did. The bad thing was no
one noticed...
She never got to finish this story of her life. She passed away
December third two- thousand and two.
I remember Grama Vera taking me to the goodwill and buying me
clothes, taking me out to country buffet, and then we'd talk about
school, art, and christmas. We'd also go to the Irish shops and
reserch our family tree.