The Wrong Road Taken

My morning bible verses were Mark 11:23–24.

Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’

I’d written a prayer about this to God:

I struggle with praying and believing.  I feel you know all things, and I hesitate to expect you to answer my prayers the way I want you too... Fill my heart with faith and take away my doubt.

The morning had already been filled with work. I’d finished painting our little three room nest in our new vacation spot in the backwoods of northern Arkansas. To get to it, a person has to drive several miles on gravel roads and cross one low-water crossing after another. It sits at the end of its own lane surrounded by a hunting ranch of over 2,000 acres and a smaller family place of the Clarks who live in Batesville. Our place was originally owned by the Clark family.

Already, during our week of working to make Buffalo Bluffs livable, we’d met two of the Clarks who’d stopped by on their way to check up on the home place and a man from down the road who drove a big tractor in to haul away the huge cylinders of baled hay on our place. He wore sweat-stained work clothes and sported a straw hat and a full red beard. We’d been encouraged to hear from the realtor that he and our neighbors down the road, the Petersons, were willing to continue bush hogging our place for the hay they needed. That was a blessing to us as there are several pastures on our 118 acre place, and it would have been an extra hassle to bring our bush hog and tractor from Texas.

Lafferty Creek

After a late breakfast, my Bible study, clearing away the painting mess, and a refreshing shower in the newly-painted bathroom, I decided to go to Mountain View to prowl through the antique and junk shops looking for a few things to make our Izard Hall (for the county in which it is standing) house more comfortable. My list for Wal Mart was also extensive… I fixed sandwiches for our lunch and put John Bob’s in the fridge to wait for him: leftover pork chop sandwiches. Yum!

A couple of days before, JB and I explored the rough road that leads from the highway to our own road. Instead of going back north on Lafferty (named after the creek that borders part of our property), we’d headed out south to find the White River. We drove for twelve miles through beautiful hills and forgotten places.

The road had narrowed towards the end into a one vehicle road near the river, when we saw a man standing outside his 4-wheel drive automobile holding a long rod in his hand and poking at the underbrush. We couldn’t pass his truck, so JB got out to speak to him. He’d killed a Timber rattler and was trying to retrieve it to show his grandkids. They talked a while. The Arkansas people we’d met so far were friendly and enjoyed a visit as much as anybody. We drove on and pulled up on River Road (still only a one lane unpaved road despite its elegant name). After taking photos and enjoying a slow drive we pulled into Guion, AR which has very little but a huge sand plant and the railroad lines to carry away the sand quarried nearby.

Finally, we reached a black topped road and sped on our way to Mountain View through the beautiful hills and valleys and winding turns. After eating supper there (we’d planned to eat lunch…), we headed back home making sure to miss the back roads on which we’d traveled to get there.

So this day I planned to avoid the back road and drive out on the highway. But I programmed Mountain View into the GPS and leaned back to enjoy listening to Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter, a book my mom and dad had loved. It’s about a boy who works in the lumber camps of Indiana in the 1920s guarding valuable Birdseye maple trees and other furniture trees from marauders in the Limberlost swamp. So when the GPS instructed me to turn south (our previous backwoods unpaved route) on Lafferty for a couple of miles, I obeyed. My first mistake.

Well, I knew I could make it through if it didn’t lead me to a paved road soon. We’d been there a couple of days before, and hadn’t we found a paved road home that had taken us a short way on Lafferty? I couldn’t reach the map across the big Toyota Tundra so I trusted the machine… My second mistake…

Driving on, I continued listening about Freckles alone guarding the swamp and wearing waist-high gaiters to protect himself from poisonous snakes. I came to a place where “…two roads diverged…” on an Arkansas back road and took the one that seemed most traveled by. Immediately the GPS began recalculating. It then told me it was only a couple of miles to the road I’d been supposed to turn on from the earlier route. No problem! My third mistake was in not turning around immediately!

My cell phone began shouting that I had cell service on this high road on the top of the hill. Well, that had to be a good sign. And then Bossy Sister (GPS) told me to turn into an even smaller road. After two miles on it, I’d be at the original road… Well I obeyed, and you guessed it: Biggest mistake of all.

As I drove carefully down the narrowing trail, I reached another road decision, and I remember thinking, No way will I take the one less traveled by. But I chose the wrong one. It steadily got worse with a deep ravine close by the driver’s side and a ditch next to a rising slope on the other. Large rocks started jutting up from the ‘road’. I angled around them as best I could; there was no way to turn around. The last straw was when I saw ahead a huge rock outcropping that stretched across the entire road! I got out to scope it out and found it was impassable.

Then I started really thinking about believing prayer. I realized I was probably in the middle of a 2500 acre hunting club. I hadn’t seen an inhabited house in more than a couple of miles. I couldn’t imagine how I could reverse up the steep decline with its jutting rocks, but it seemed my only choice. So I asked God for help and for a faithful, believing heart to be thankful ahead of time for rescue. And climbed back in the pickup. Now this pickup is big, and I could barely see over the toolbox to the road behind in the back window. I tried to do it using the side mirrors and even an open door at times. I kept either getting too close to the slope on my side or running into trailing branches and muddy places on the other. Finally, after inching back only a few yards, I decided to check and see whether the place in front was REALLY impassable.

It was.

Now I was faced with the decision. The GPS insisted it was only 1.1 mile ahead to my turning. I could walk it. So I set out: in shorts and sandals. I kept thinking about snakes and poison ivy and wild pigs and black bears. Now I’m just asking God to protect me. The sun came out, and I sweated and walked over a road (?) that looked more like a dry stream bed. But I kept walking. Isn’t that what God calls us to do? To keep going trusting that, whatever happens. we are not abandoned?

Finally, I reached a trestle bridge which I thought might be the vaunted road. I had to scramble up the side (in my sandals) to find it was a railroad track. My heart sank, but I slid back down considering what would happen if I broke a bone or sprained an ankle. And found more of the road going under the bridge and curving alongside the railroad.

I saw evidence of a building and a mown field and began to think I’d found help. But again my heart plummeted as I saw the building was on the other side of a tall fence and didn’t seem inhabited. What next?

I looked up at the railroad to see a strange sight. It looked like a pickup coming down the tracks. And it was. I flagged it down, and it was two railroad men and two bridge inspectors riding in a truck specially built to convert to ride on the railroad tracks. When I asked the driver for help, he said he didn’t know what they could do. A train was expected soon.

I asked him if he knew where I was and where I could go to call someone for help. (Inside, I’m thinking who would I call? John Bob’s and my phone were mostly out of service unless we were on top of a hill. And I only knew the realtor and a contractor we’d talked with about doing some work for us and some of our neighbors.)

The driver was an Arkansan and pulled out an old flip phone for me to use—after he pulled the truck off the track and converted it to road travel. 

I was flabbergasted to realize I could hardly remember how to place a call on an old phone. And what phone numbers did I know? I pulled out my own No Service phone and checked the recently dialed numbers. There was one in Melbourne, AR. So I called it! A man answered, and I asked, “Who is this?” He could have said that I was the one telephoning, but instead he told me his name, and I realized it was the contractor. (When he was recommended to us, we were told he NEVER answered his phone during the day…)

I told him who I was and asked if he knew the realtor’s number. He knew it and called it out immediately saying, if I couldn’t reach David to call him back and he’d leave his job to come rescue me. In a frightening world, there are good people still around.

I called Dave, and he didn’t know who I was until I mentioned John Bob. He hesitated a minute trying to figure out how to help. “Where are you?” I turned to the railroad man. He began trying to tell me how I was near such and such a place on the so and so road. I handed the phone to him! I heard him telling Dave they’d get me to the little store near the sand plant in Guion if he could pick me up there, and it was set.

The two men in the back seat hopped out and started pulling out all sorts of paraphernalia and piling it in the limited space of the truck bed making room for me. I climbed in the middle between the two bridge inspectors who were in their twenties and NOT railroad men they assured me.

We drove across the railroad on the same road I’d walked out. It was drivable now but slow going. For twenty-five minutes Arkansas (the driver) crept along telling all sorts of stories about where we were passing and when he was around this area last and where he expected I’d bailed out of the truck. Shotgun was quiet, but hailed from Louisiana and remembered coming to San Augustine, TX for his wife’s family reunions. Both men in the front seat were wearing hard hats and railroad uniforms and neon safety vests and were in late middle age, I guessed.

The boys in the back seat were skeptical of Arkansas’ stories and knowledgeable about bridges. As we passed huge concrete railroad culverts, Wisconsin, on my right, called out their date of construction. I’d noticed tagging (spray painting) on the culvert sides but wondered at his knowledge till he pointed out the dates that had been stamped in the wet concrete ages ago: 1938, 1932 and so on. We passed under a bridge the inspectors had not yet inspected and Arkansas offered to set the inspectors down to do their job while he took me on to Guion.

“How far are we from Guion?” asked the red-haired boy from Missouri.

“Oh just a little piece,” Arkansas answered.

Red rolled his eyes showing his understanding of Arkansas and said, “No, we’ll go along with you. I don’t trust we wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for you for hours!”

Sure enough it was thirty minutes later at about 15 miles per hour before we reached Guion along the big White River. I went into the store to buy myself a Diet Coke and offering to buy everyone else a cold drink. The boys refused, and Red muttered, “What did I say about how long Arkansas’ little bit would be?"

They were soon ordering sandwiches made from fresh cut lunch meats. It was a tiny place with one tired-looking woman sweeping the floor and a few empty picnic tables. The cold box reminded me of the grocery in Rosebud in the fifties where Mom sometimes bought fresh sliced Bologna and American cheese. It tasted like a delicacy and not like any Bologna and cheese we’d ever had from a package.

As I turned to go and wait outside, a man came in asking if I was who he was looking for. As I looked closer, I recognized him. He was the older owner/realtor who was always telling John Bob stories about all the people and places in Izard County. He hadn’t paid attention to me, but I was so glad to see him!

We got right in his 4-wheel drive SUV and headed back down the Lafferty Road that JB and I had traveled a couple of days before. He wanted to see if I could recognize the road I’d taken earlier before going to get John Bob and taking us out to find the pickup.

Sure enough I recognized it. I’m not sure he trusted me, but we headed back to Buffalo Bluffs.

I was afraid we’d find John Bob away from the house working on clearing a path to the big creek or walking around naked after a shower. I didn’t want to say much about this likelihood…but asked Dave to honk as we passed the gate…

Sure enough JB was just about to go out exploring when we turned up. Of course since we have no cell service he was a little surprised to see his wife who’d left a couple of hours earlier to shop in Mountain View returning with the realtor from Melbourne. He threw on another t-shirt and shorts after taking off the long pants and long-sleeved shirt suitable for exploring in tick and chigger country.

Back to Lafferty Road we drove and headed up the left hand turn I’d indicated. Dave kept saying, “Does this look familiar?” I had to admit since I’d been listening to Freckles, I hadn’t paid very close attention. I recognized buzzards feasting on dead wildlife. I thought I remembered a derelict house. Surely I hadn’t turned on either of the narrow lanes that were the only possibilities on the road we were traveling? But after going a long way down this road, it was clear that I must have, since this road wasn’t getting rockier.

Dave had to return to his office since he is a diabetic and feared having a flat tire out in the wilderness and being in a bad way. So he turned around and took us about twenty miles to his office and turned over the mud covered 4-wheel drive to us. He had a big Tahoe to head home in. We were told to keep his car overnight. It was after 5 o’clock now and darkening a little as if it might rain again. We headed back to find and rescue the truck before dark.

As we headed for the first turn off, John Bob kept cutting his eyes toward me and asking, “Does this look familiar?”  As we traveled slowly down the first turn off (which seemed the most likely), JB noticed no tire tracks in the muddy spots. I’m sure glad I married an Eagle Scout! We stopped as it worsened and walked a good distance, but decided this was definitely NOT the right road.

We were discussing God’s answers to prayer. Clearly, in retrospect, the railroad men, our contractor who answered the phone, and Dave the realtor were rescuers whose good hearts God employed to answer my prayers. At the time I was looking for help in backing up the truck and rescuing myself. But God, in his wisdom, protected me from wild animals and broken bones and allowed me to meet some interesting and kind people who were willing to go a long way out of their path to be of help.

We returned to the SUV and tried the second turn off. Why in the world would I have taken this unprepossessing path? After traveling in the car a way, I insisted we get out and walk since we didn’t want to be caught again. We came to another road choice: two more paths diverged in a muggy wood and I recalled thinking that I had wanted to figure out the one more traveled by.

John Bob walked down the left and I the right for a short distance until, Voila! John Bob saw fresh tire tracks on this out-of-the-way trail. Now I remembered, the GPS told me to go this way, and I obeyed. Can you believe it?

Walking on down an unconscionably long way, we saw the truck was stopped ahead.  John Bob took pictures. And then with me sitting on the back tailgate as guide, backed that pickup right up the rock strewn trail till he reached a place where he could turn it. He is my most amazing hero! I got back in the pickup, and we headed back to the SUV and returned to our safe nest about 7 pm. What a day!

Izard Hall

Thank you, Father for rescuing me from my folly and introducing me to gentlemen of worth.

The next day when we returned the SUV to Dave, he told us how he and his wife had discussed what might have happened if I’d been injured and unable to walk to the railroad. No one knew I’d gone out Lafferty Road and certainly hadn’t known I took several wrong turnings. These kind people weren’t sure I’d have ever been found in that part of uninhabited backwoods.

And John Bob and I knew it was true. God showed me that praying has less to do with telling Him what to do and more with turning to Him and asking for His help.  It means keeping going forward when the path is not clear, knowing that whatever happens will enrich our lives and lead us to His path.

Is Anyone Watching?

Someone is watching you.

It sounds like a horror movie.  Or an old-fashioned hellfire sermon about the all-seeing eye of God.

Long before I started remembering things, I was part of a story about my Mom.  She was the mother of five, living in a small broken-down house in Fort Worth, and married to a firefighter.  (Dad would never call himself a fireman because when he was a boy, a fireman was the man who kept the engine stoked on a steam-powered train.)

My sister Melany and me at McCurdy (I think...).

My older brother and sisters have many stories about the house on McCurdy, but I don’t remember anything about it.  I was only two when we were able to move out to the country to live.  There are lots of good stories about the hard times and the fun, the riches of love and sacrifice.  Sometimes I think I remember some things that happened there because I’ve heard the great stories so many times.

But this story is a favorite of mine.  None of the family knew about this story until much later when my Mom was told it by someone who’d been watching her at the time. 

About eight years after my birth, my Mom had her last naturally born child, and we were living in Fort Worth again.  The church we attended had a second floor nursery with windows through which the moms could watch the service and a speaker system to broadcast the service as well.  Next door to the room with cribs was a room with a few pews as well.  I remember sitting in there with my two year old little brother while Mom took care of my baby sister in the other room. 

One Sunday she was taking care of Camille when another lady came in with her baby and recognized Mom.  Her older child was Emily, exactly my age, and Mrs. Holt had attended the same church as we had when Emily and I were babies. 

As they caught up on the intervening years, Mrs. Holt surprised Mom by telling her that she was the reason that the Holt family was in church today.

Mrs. Holt recalled that she’d lived near us when we’d lived on McCurdy Street in 1951.  It had been a hard time for her with a new baby.  She’d struggled to get her family up and to church on Sundays. 

One life-changing Sunday morning, she’d looked out the window and seen a strange sight.  It was a lady pushing an obviously ancient baby carriage with four older children walking along beside.  All the children were starched and clad in their Sunday best.  Perhaps the smallest walking children of four and six were grasping the edge of the carriage to keep up and the older boy of nine was probably leading the way with his sister of eleven.  Who knew what they were talking about?  It was clear that this woman whom Mrs. Holt had seen at her church was taking five children to Sunday school without even the help of a husband.

There and then, Mrs. Holt thought if Mrs. Box could get five kids up and neatly dressed to walk to church, surely she could do the same with one baby.  As she recounted this to my Mom that day in 1958, she confided that it was on that day in 1951 when she and her family had turned over a new leaf.  They followed the example of Mrs. Box and started going to church in spite of how difficult it seemed.

Years later when the baby she was minding in 1958 came to the University of Texas, I met him and found him to be a young man searching to serve and please God.

Mother was aghast at this story. At that time her family had been so poor.  Dad was a Fort Worth fire fighter who worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off.  Every other Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, he was at work.  With only one car, he had to take it to work.  If the family went to church, they had to walk.  She certainly didn’t remember this critical Sunday. 

All five of us and my Dad.  Looks like a Sunday when he was off.

She did remember how difficult it had been to get everyone ready and get to church.  She did remember that some Sundays she could barely put one foot ahead of the other to push my carriage to church and keep a pleasant look on her face.  But she hadn’t done it because she knew someone was watching her.  She’d done it because she was a woman of faith who wanted her children to grow up as people of faith.

In these later years of my life, I’ve come to realize how often someone of whom we’re not aware may be watching the decisions we make. And I pray that what they have seen or will see of my life is God’s love fueling my actions. I hope for this especially when a situation would make it easy to give up or retaliate or be bitter. 

Sometimes our Father gives us the gift of a Mrs. Holt to tell us years later that when we acted faithfully in difficult times that we truly helped someone else to walk faithfully as well.

When I was a little girl I lived on the edge of a little town called Newark, Texas.  I was the youngest of five children, and I had a great time living ‘out in the country.’ 

My oldest sister was called Ramona.  She was lovely and went to high school where she was on the drill squad.  She sewed beautifully and made her own uniform which was green corduroy and had a long full skirt.  At a football game, the girls would go out on the field and their long full skirts would swirl and float.  My big sister made me a matching outfit of green corduroy. Although I was only five, I felt so big and I thought everyone was looking at me—impressed that I was one of the team!

My only brother, at the time, was called Mickey.  As TV was just beginning, I was so proud that his name was the same as a very famous mouse who’d been starring in movies for many years.  He had a bicycle to ride to the little country school where my mother taught and coached girls’ sports.  Sometimes, it was Mickey’s job to take me to Mamaw Spraggins, the babysitter.  She lived across the highway and some railroad tracks and down on the other side of the tiny main street of our town.  Mickey would pick me up and set me on the handlebars of his bike and pedal me over in the early morning.  That was like being on a carnival ride, but I was not afraid.  He would never drop me!

I had another sister who came after Mickey, whose name was Marquita.  She was always busy planning stuff.  Once she begged to be allowed to take me to school on the day before Christmas holidays.  I was proud that my older siblings wanted me to go to school with them and excited to see what it was like.  In Marquita’s class; she’d talked the teacher into letting the children do a holiday talent show.  That was the first time I heard “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.”

I don't remember a lot about it, but when we first moved into our house in the country it didn't have indoor plumbing!  That meant we had to go to the bathroom down a path outside in a little house called an outhouse.  The only time I remember going in it was when my brother, Mickey, was out hoeing in the vegetable patch and I crawled over the board that blocked the front door, pulled down my panties and realized there was a snake in the outhouse!  I jumped down and tried to crawl out the door, but my panties pooled around my ankles prevented me from exiting.  Mickey heard my wails and came to my rescue.  He killed that snake with his hoe and, of course, he was even more my hero.

It must have been soon after that my daddy dragged two old buildings up to the side of the house and put in a bathroom and a large den at the back of the house.  Dad was a fire fighter and worked 24 hours on at the Fort Worth Fire Department and 24 hours off at our house.  He took care of me on his days off and I followed him around while he worked on building the extra room and bathroom.  When he needed to go to the store to purchase an item to finish a project, he would let me stand right beside him on the car seat behind his shoulder.  In those days no one had car seats for children.  I always felt so safe and special standing beside him as we drove along with the windows down and his big tanned arm resting on the window sill.  Even when he was in his nineties, he’d get a dreamy look on his face and ask if I remembered when I’d ridden up beside me—his little Tahnanbaum.

The next to youngest daughter was Melany.  She was only four years older than me, but that put her into school when I still had to go to the baby sitters.   She could make me do anything if she promised to play with me.  Of course I was just a little tag-a-long sister and not much use to her.  We took baths together in the huge clawfoot tub in our new bathroom.  With so many of us, we didn’t put much water in the tub because hot water didn't last long.  One night, we were splashing around together enjoying the luxury of a tub, when Daddy came in with a beautiful Dalmatian dog on a leash.  Now, we never had our animals in the house, but I guess Dad was so glad to be bringing us a new dog that he just burst into the house with her.

We’d had a well-loved cocker spaniel named Emper Diller who’d been known by everyone in town.  In fact he went to school sometimes with Mickey, and I can remember him attending church with us as well.  If you’ve ever been to an old-fashioned church, you know that his howls blended well with the enthusiastic singing of the rest of the congregation.  Unfortunately, Emper finally was run over by a car and never recovered.  We were all devastated.

So I think Daddy was hoping we’d all love Dottie as we’d loved Emper.  And Melany and I were ecstatic.  She was a gentle dog as I remember and this is a picture of me standing out in the yard of the Newark house with her.  (If you look closely, you might see some resemblance between this little girl and some very special grandchildren!)

The Jewels

When I was a little girl living near Fort Worth in the little town of Newark, I asked my mother a very important question.  I was the fifth of seven children.  My daddy was a fire fighter and mother had trained to be a teacher.  At that time, mothers were looked down on if they worked outside the home.  In fact, in 1939 when my parents married, Mom had to quit her first teaching job.  Married teachers were not allowed. 

My favorite Christmas doll: Ramona made a bride dress and other clothes to go with the doll from Santa.  They were all packaged in an oatmeal cylinder.  I couldn't figure out ahead of time what could be in that shape of present.  I'm standing beside my baby sister, Camille.

It was very hard to feed and clothe five children on a fire fighter’s salary.  Even when Mom started teaching when I was about three, times were not easy.  I had an older cousin whose hand-me-downs greatly enriched my wardrobe.  My parents bought powdered milk so that we children would have milk to drink.  It was very cheap and perhaps not so tasty, but we didn't know what regular milk tasted like so we drank lots of it.  At Christmas, we received one toy and took great joy in it.

Mom holding me when I was a baby with big sister Melany nearby.

Anyway, my turn had come to ask my mom if we were rich. Turns out all my siblings had asked the same question at some point earlier so my mom had her answer ready.  She told me a story, and here it goes.

Once there was a very rich lady who wore lots of beautiful jewelry.  She couldn't wear all her gold and silver and fine gems so she took great pleasure in taking out all her jewelry boxes and looking at all she owned.  She would put on the lovely pearls and look at herself in the mirror with pride. One day her maid came in while she was admiring all her sparkling treasures.

She decided to give her maid a treat: she would show all her fine jewels to her.  So she called her over and said condescendingly, “I know you don’t have such beautiful things so I thought I’d let you look at mine.”  She felt she would even enjoy them more while watching her maid look longingly at the pretty things.

She was surprised to see her maid look at her with…could it be patience and kindness?  The maid stopped straightening up the things the lady had dropped on the floor and folded her hands in front of her apron.  It was almost as if she ‘put on’ a look of admiration as she watched her employer proudly show each piece of her extensive collection. When the lady was looking toward the jewels, she’d sneak a quick look around at all the work she would have to do later and perhaps looked a little less patient.

Finally, when the lady closed the last box, she asked, “Now, aren't you glad to see all these fine and beautiful things I have?  Perhaps someday you’ll be able to save up and get yourself a jewel.”

At this her maid straightened up and said, “Oh, no ma’am, I already have seven of the finest jewels you've ever seen.  Would you like to see my treasures?”

Her boss was taken aback and wondered why this very efficient and capable maid would find it necessary to lie to her.  There was absolutely no chance that she, with her neatly mended dress and run-down shoes owned seven jewels. 

“Well,” she said doubtfully, “Do you bring them with you to work?”

“No, ma’am,” the maid replied, “but I’d be happy to bring them to work with me tomorrow and show them to you.”

“Well…all right, if you think you can still get your work done…”

The next morning, when the lady had selected her jewelry for the day, just to make sure her maid’s jewels did not outshine her own, she came into the dining room for breakfast. 

She saw the maid beaming with happiness and pride.  “When would you like to see my jewels?” she asked.

Her employer sat down at the table and said, “I guess you might as well bring them in while I eat my breakfast.”

Left to right: Melany, Mickey, me, Ramona, and Marquita standing in front of our  house in Newark.

Immediately, her maid opened the door to the kitchen and waved in a line of seven children from a tall dark-haired girl of about 18 holding a baby girl, a boy just shorter, of about 15, carefully holding the hand of a young toddler boy to a girl at the end with two long blond pigtails.  They were dressed cleanly and neatly and each had a happy smile of their faces.  “These are my lovely jewels,” said the maid.  “I, too, love to look at them and hold them each and every day.  I think they just grow more valuable every year.  I think I’m the richest woman I know.”

The Sisters.  Left to Right: Marquita holding baby sister, Camille, Ramona, and Melany.  I'm in front wearing an Easter hat like the rest of the girls.  We're in front of our house on Bomar in Fort Worth.

As one might imagine, the lady was surprised and a little disgruntled by this display of wealth.  She tried to smile graciously and thank her employee for sharing her children with her.  But every time she took out her jewels to look and gloat over them after that, she couldn't help noticing how cold and unfriendly they were.

Mother didn't have to say much after she told this story.  Each and every one of us went away pondering over the fact that we were a very rich family because there were so many of us children. From that time to this, I've always understood what true wealth is.