Forty Years of the
Charles & Nancy
Rutherford
Family

Then we went back to Bossier City and rented a room in a small motel. These days people watch TV in motels, well all that was in our room was a radio and it cost a dime. We couldn't get it to play. The next morning we had a flat and after Charles changed it, we went to Shreveport to visit Charles' brother, Johnny, and his wife, Anna Dell. After visiting with them, we started home to start our new life.

Charles' mother, Granny (Jewel) Rutherford, was staying with his sister, Ruth, so we stayed at her house on Sticky Road and kept Betty, Annie Sue, and Carl (charles' younger sisters and brother), sending them to school in Gurdon. When Grannie Rutherford came home, Charles rented us an apartment in the Toby Down House on Maple Street. Gosh, did I ever feel good, had a bathroom, pretty kitchen, living room and bedroom. I washed clothes in the bathroom for months. Then one day Charles camein and he had rented us a house on Josylyn Street. We were so excited that we moved so fast, we forgot all of our food. We had to go back and get the key back so we could get our food.

I began to get worried that I couldn't have a baby, Charles said we could adopt a baby, but I prayed and eleven months after we were married, we had a baby boy (Eddie) on January 31, 1955. Dad wanted us to move in with him because he was afraid I didn't know enough to raise a baby. But believe me, I knew more than he and Charles. Before Eddie was born, Charles thought he would be hard hearing because my Dad was and Dad thought he would be forn without fingers because Charles had two of his fingers cut off. But I knew I had a then perfect baby.

That was the start of our family and now there will surely be bits and pieces.

We moved to Ohio when Eddie was about six months old. Charles worked as an upholsterer. One day I lost Eddie and found him on John Jay'sand Sue's doorstep calling Sue (They lived close to us), but they weren't home. He knew it was Jay's payday and he would say "money, money." He had a big old chalk pig and everytime we had company, he would say "money, money." We kept talking about killing the pig. Well, Eddie did just that with a hammer. We bought a set of dishes at an auction and went to town and got him a train and a tricycle. When we got home, he cut his finger bad enough to go to the doctor.

Dad came up by bus to see us and Dad always wore boots. Well, his visit was perfectly timed for Eddie to train himself to use the bathroom and the boots were the perfect potty. That is until Dad found out why there was always water in his boot. He fixed a peach can for Eddie to use.

Eddie started biting really bad and Betty Ledbetter showed him how to quit that real quick. He started walking when he was nine months old, but fell out a door and wouldn't walk again until he was 11 months old.

Next I had a baby girl, Myra. She was so small, under five pounds. Eddie would lay on the bed all day if she did and just love on her. At three weeks of age, she and Eddie both had whooping cough. And you talk about close, did our family ever get close! I would have to leave Eddie with Betty and go to the hospital to see Myra and I couldn't even go in the room with her and everytime Charles and I left the hospital, a little more of us died. But God was with us and we got through that and brought our baby girl back home. I think it was only two weeks she stayed in the hospital, but it seemed like two years at the time. We moved back to Arkansas in the summer of 1957.

My Dad always planted Eddie a watermelon. When Myra got big enough to roll the watermelon and cracked Eddie's watermelon, Eddie decided that he didn't have such a sweet little sister after all.

Our next baby was Chuck, my favorite -- the other three kids always say. They are all my favorite, each and every one of them.

One day Eddie, Myra and Dickie Don Clark (Hazel Benham Clark's son and Aunt Suzie Wells Benham's grandson) held Chuck down in an ant bed because Chuck was playing like he was Hercules. I whipped Eddie and Myra and told Dickie Don that I would see that Hazel whipped him. He said that he didn't hold the end that got stung.

If anyone gave Myra some dresses, she would put all of them on at one time. One day she had on five dresses at one time.

Then Myra broke her arm, we got it out of the cast on Monday and she broke it again. Later she got a compound fracture of the same arm. We could have gotten by on a one sleeve coat for her that winter.

One year Charles was working at Crossett and Chuck and Eddie went out ot Papa Wells' old pond and Eddie caught a big fish and was muddy all over from wrestling it in. We made a picture to show their Dad and the film got lost. Charles brought Teresa a doll home from Crossett one weekend and she named it the "Crazy Kid from Crossett."

The plywood plant opened in Gurdon when Teresa was three and Ricky Wells was four and they set the woods on fire and ran away. That was the longest time of my life. They came back on their own.

Chuck was a Momma's baby. When he woke up in the morning, he always cried until I sat down and held him. He didn't care if I got Eddie and Myra ready for school or not. After I held him for awhile, he would get down and lay all day.

When Eddie was about four, he could read all of his books. Charles and his brother, Carl Ray, loved to hear him read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess. He would read to Tommy Eckert. When we stayed at his Granny Rutherford's she would get him out of bed and feed him biscuits soaked in coffee. Eddie used to read with Papa Wells a lot also.

When I went to the hospital to have Chuck, Papa told Eddie and Myra to stay with him and Momma would bring them back a baby. He said if it was a boy it would be Eddie's and if it was a girl, it would be Myra's. Well, believe you me, that was a mistake. Myra cried for a week for me to take Chuck bak and trade him for a girl.

Myra loved butter. If there was any on the table she would eat it like ice cream.

Chuck and Ricky were running down an old car of Papa Wells' that had been junked out and had no keys. Well, Teresa was in the trunk. They shut the trunk not knowing she was in there. By the time Eddie got in through the back seat, she was sitting back there eating our horse's All-Grain. She ate Gravy Train with our Basset Hound too.

Eddie almost ran away from home one day until he and I had a talk and I bet he remembers that.

Chuck was the bleeder in our family. He rode a motorcycle on the back wheel all the time and was always jumping things with it. But one day he got on a bicycle and had a wreck and almost got killed.

Teresa ran Chuck into the trash burning barrel one day and he cut his leg open and ruinied a new pair of jeans. When Chuck was still in diapers, Eddie and Ralph were playing ball and Ralph hit a home run right into Chuck's chest -- blood again! He was bleeding from the mouth and kept passing out. We thought he had injured a lung but he had just cut his mouth. This was when he was about a year and two months old.

One sunday, charles' sister, Maggie Eckert, and her daughter Nancy, came to visit while we were fixing to eat dinner so they stayed and ate with us. Teresa was just a baby and since Chuck was always the first to eat a chicken leg, we would get the grissle off and let her gnaw on the bone. Nancy, being a lot like her Dad (Bill Eckert), and kinda dry humored, asked Mag why we just gave Teresa a bone to eat. I told Nancy to be quiet because Teresa hadn't found out about meat yet. Nancy just says, "Oh," and kept quiet about it.

Charles and I first joined Sycamore Baptist Church, then when we moved back to Papa Wells' house, we moved our letter to South Fork Baptist Church. All of our kids were saved while attending this Church and are still members there except Teresa. I believe she has moved her letter to her current church.

I remember how after Church, we ate dinner and then took all the kids roller skating at the skating rink at the Gurdon Airport. I found out that Chuck was holding out some of his Sunday School money to have more money for cokes at the skating rink. I tell you, that boy could be something else. He really made me better at the job of being a mother because I had to stay on my toes with him all the time. He even pulled the "dress at night" for school the next day trick on me so he could sleep longer in the mornings. Didn't matter if his clothes were wrinkled from sleeping in them all night. Whenever I would try to get on to him, he would just look at me with those big brown eyes and need I say more.

I whipped Chuck and Teresa one night with the toilet brush. They cried so hard that I went to bed crying too. I found out years later that they didn't cry because I had wipped them or because the whipping hurt -- they only cried because I had just cleaned the toilet with the brush before I spanked them.

I remember the time Myra was going to the bathroom in our old outside toilet and there was a possum sitting on the seat. She put on a good show running across the yard with her pants down.

Although we just had four kids, there was always a yard full of kids at our house. One day our pastor, Brother John Holmes, was visiting and asked how we fed all those kids. I told him we didn't, we just set four plates and when they were took up we ran the rest off.

Eddie held a funeral for the parakeet and was praying when Myra and Chuck got tickles. There were nearly two more funerals.

The kids all had nicknames. Eddie's was George from his Uncle Bob Wells. Chuck's was Buckie from his Great Aunt Lillie Wells Hazelwood. Jr. and Jimmy Ledbetter called Teresa, Peanut. Everyone called Myra, Sissy until she started to school.

I left Teresa at Center Ridge Church one time when we went to a shower there. I remembered her when I drove up at the house (about a mile away). Of course, by the time I got back there she had told everyone that I had left her. She was four at the time.

When Teresa started kindergarten, she got kicked out and banned from returning. She ran away three times in one day. Once she even climbed to the top of the screen door and tore the screen off to get away. She would go about two blocks to the M-System where Charles worked. She cried everyday and would tell me, "Beat me to death with a hair brush or give me to that old woman down the road, but don't make me go to school." So when she started first grade, I let Charles take her. He said he could do it. Well, he did after she locked him out of the car and told the principal, that she wanted to go to the black school (which had become Middle School when the Gurdon School system instituted integration) with her sister. She caused Mrs. Barry Hempstead to retire from school the first week and then she had Mrs. Baskin for a teacher. Well, after a spanking, she went to school, but half the time she would get off the bus with Myra at Middle School and I would have to go get her and take her to her school.

Chuck could tell you why they had rags in the gym (to wash mud off the school after kids pelted it with mud clods) and a lot of other nice to know things about school. I'm real sure the Gurdon School Teachers and Administrators were glad when our kids finally left the Gurdon School System.

Teresa used to go deer hunting with her Dad before she got to be school age. She was quite a little tom boy at times.

I have ten grandkids now and accoding to Angie (Myra's oldest daughter), I have one great grandchild, Miss Piggy, her pet Vietnamese pot belly pig.

There's lots more, but it'll have to be set down at another writing. maybe I can get the kids to put their memories down for me and add to this. Take care. Come see us sometime and we'll talk over old times together.