Dean (Final Part)

After we got to The Strong House, Daddy got a job as a night Marshall and he began to see the lights of the city and things as he worked all night. First thing we knew he was not coming home.

Just quit coming home…

But he did come back.

One day he showed up and he had the measles.


Pa had always been careful to keep his children away from the measles. (They got the whooping cough, but never the measles on The Creek)


We all got them, even Momma; she was pregnant but we didn't know at the time. Louise and Macie got the pneumonia with the measles so Dr. McDaniel had to come.

Louise got better. But Macie didn't, she died. (March 30, 1934)

She died due to the measles which made everyone mad. In time we found out about Daddy’s mistress Edna; her son had the measles and Daddy got it there.
 He lived with Edna in Lepanto, Arkansas and was taking care of her, her son and mother. Daddy just changed over night; I hardly knew him.

I had known a soft, loving father, and he turned into what I considered to be an outlaw. He was drinking and he got around a lot.


There was no welfare help for kids back then. So throughout the spring and summer of 1934, we chopped cotton for pay. It was the four us - me, Daisy, Louise, and Houston. But that year we were paid for three. Houston was eight and Louise was eleven so they were counted as one worker.

Many times, Daddy would come home and take our money which we needed desperately to eat. All this was happening in town and everyone knew it.

August 19, 1934

Daddy came home one Sunday. I never did know how she got word to him, but Momma was fixin’ to have a baby. It was still secretive back then; you didn't talk about sex.

So I went to Sunday school but I didn’t stay for church because I was anxious. Old Dr. McDaniel was at the house when me and the other children left for church. Momma was thirty-six and had not fully recovered from the measles.

When I came home there was a baby in some kinda bassinet, some kinda box. I turned the cover back and looked at that baby… (My father’s mother, my grandmother: JoAnn)


It wasn't much bigger than a big rat. Daddy looked at me.

“She's cute!” I said.

“Well, don't get attached to her,” he snapped.


“Why not?” I snapped back. By that time, I was getting kinda “talk-back” to my daddy cause I was making my own living.


“Well, Dr. McDaniel says she's too weak to nurse. She can't live."

You would think that I couldn't remember... but I can smell her now. Had baby oil on her, smelt good and clean.


So I went to my bed which it was located in the kitchen, got in and prayed. I just wanted to know, why?Finally, it came to me.

“Feed that baby!”
I got my ass up and I went down to that room where Momma and Daddy were sleeping. That baby was still over in that little box.


“GET UP! Get them pants on! And get me one of them bottles of milk! The freshest they got.”

“What do you want to do?” Tommie said angrily.

“I'm gonna feed that baby!” I told him.


“Naw... you ain't gonna feed that baby! Cuz you’re gonna strangle her and kill her.”


“Well. Maybe I will, but maybe I won’t. All I know is she is gonna die if I don't feed her. GO! Get me some milk!” I hollered.


He got up like a little boy and put his pants on. And he went down to the restaurant that stayed open all night and brought me back one of them little bottles of milk.
 While he was gone I had got me a dropper out and boiled it, scalded it clean.

Then I took some soft fabric and made diapers.

When he brought me back the milk I sat up for the rest of the night. Every once in a while I would drop one drop of milk into her mouth… She lay in my arms and boy, could she could move! She was very little, but she could move.

I put milk in her mouth all night. And when she cried she sounded like a mouse. I had her in the box beside my bed, and when she would move I would reach down there and give her some milk. I was afraid to put her in the bed with me because I might get on her. That's how she survived.

She weighed less than three pounds. Ricky Teague weighed three pounds and she was smaller than him.
She started looking for that milk! And I knew she had brains then; that was what had me worried.

I would be sixteen in a month.

I was a pretty good-sized girl and I wouldn't let Louise or Daisy help. In fact, I wouldn't let Momma much. She didn't try. (Postpartum Depression) I felt like JoAnn was mine. But so did Louise and Daisy, and this caused some trouble.

Daisy and Louise helped when JoAnn started the milk and we got her a regular bottle and nipple.


But Houston did the finest thing:

We had been going to the Mahanes every morning and every evening when they milked their cow. It took a mile to get over there)
One of us would go there while the others went to the field to chop. And one Sunday we were talking about the milk. Somebody said that goat milk was better for babies because it was richer. Well, hell! I didn't know where you could find a goat.


One day I came home and a goat was tied up in the front yard. Houston swapped his bike for a goat!

Tommie, Lummie, Dean, Daisy


How long did Tommie stick around after JoAnn was born?


He stayed that night and he left the next day. He went back to Edna and didn’t come home for eight weeks.


When JoAnn was three months old when we moved. Daddy rented a farm from Mr. Barton, ten miles out of town. (Tyronza)
 It was forty acres and we cut wood across the road for firewood.
Daddy never worked it.

We planted our first cotton. Mr. Barton sent us two mules, but when his boy rode the mules to us, one took a fall, and broke it's neck. So, that’s how we only had one mule.
The next morning we set out to plow and I put the harness on upside down. Houston argued that it was wrong; he was right. We still made a good crop.

JoAnn was three years old before she ever walked.
She had been too weak to walk but she talked a long time before she walked. 
JoAnn looked a lot like Macie and she walked like her. She was a lot of fun! She was active and walked with little steps.

Did y'all go to school in Arkansas?
 Not too much, because we worked. Houston and Louise went a little, but not much. We went to school while we were at the Strong Place but I was two years behind. The kids in the sixth grade made fun of me for being so big and so behind... I was five foot - eight inches and weighed one-hundred pounds.


But we made sure JoAnn went to school. First through Twelfth. Dean says this proudly.

What did y'all do for entertainment when you weren't farming?

Mr. Sanders next door had a radio. It was the first one I ever saw. We also went to square dances. On Saturdays, I went the store but I had to ride with neighbors. Momma didn't like it, but I didn't drink. Never touched it. Momma sent Daddy a note about my car riding; he came home and tried to get onto me... I wouldn't let him.
I don't like people judging other people. Dean despised hypocrisy.

There was a flood in 1937. The Mississippi threatened to break the levee above Tyronza. The Mississippi exceeded flood stage on January 20th and the Corp of Engineers mandated an evacuation on the 21st.

Everybody left their homes. Daddy drove us to Memphis to stay with Uncle Will Condrey’s kids. Daisy and I stayed with Betty Condrey. Louise, Houston, JoAnn and Momma stayed at Floyd Condrey's.

We had made a good crop in ’36 before we left the house outside Tyronza, so we put our provisions and groceries in the attic. In case the lower part flooded as it had in 1927. It was a common thing people did in the Delta when a flood threatened. We had a hog killed and cured so we were prepared for 1937.


By the end of February the worst of the flooding was over and families were allowed to return to the Delta.
When we got home all our stuff had been stolen. There was no food, even the blankets and quilts were gone.


Tommie did it.


Audrey Dueaide Condrey told on him. He went back with him to their home and Daddy said he was going to check on things. He stole it all.
 And nobody liked Tommie now. We covered for him for many years, but it got back to Alabama about how he was. But by that time Ma and Pa found out, they were struggling too.

We got really hungry and we almost starved. Houston found some ears of corn when he was rabbit hunting; we parched them and ate them. We also found greens with young sprouts. Tom McClendon, who we rented land from loaned us some groceries.

I went to the commissary and got twenty dollars worth of food. We paid it the next year.

And Pappy died March 17th, 1937. Only Momma and JoAnn were able to go back for the funeral on a bus. While they were there, there came a storm and flooded Northwest Alabama. It washed out many bridges so they couldn't return directly; they were gone for a month.

I got married in August 21,1937.
While Daisy was dating Pete, I was dating Charles Richards. I met him at church but he wasn't inside. He saw me and told his friends he was going to marry me. He had a car. Daisy said he was not the marrying kind. They had two daughters- Jeanette & Martha.
We were married 17 years but Charles was an alcoholic and he went out on me. Bad guy.

Daisy married Pete, July 5, 1941. They had Morris Wayne.

1942: When the war started, Louise, Charles, and I moved to Memphis to work. There were a lot of jobs and I got a job at Armour Co: I was a supervisor in the bacon department. Armour was on Riverside Dr. and Sledge Ave. I rode the streetcar everyday. We lived first at Central and Lamar, a nice neighborhood. Floyd Condrey said we couldn't afford it. And we didn't stay but a few months. When Pete went to war, Daisy, Momma, and JoAnn came to Memphis.

The “second house” was in South Memphis. It was the old store building on Florida Street. There was me, Daisy, Louise, JoAnn, Charles Richards and Jeanette and Martha.
Houston was with Daddy during the war; they were logging. He had registered for the war but he had an injured finger. His trigger finger.

How?

Houston was holding a bush for Louise to cut and make a stick horse. She used a chopping axe and she chopped his finger off.

We got ahold of Mr. Sanders to drive us to the doctor. His finger was hanging by a piece of skin. The doctor wanted to cut it all the way off but there was no adult there to sign. So he said he would sew it back on and if in the future he wanted it off, Daddy or Momma could come and sign. We poured medicine on it every fifteen minutes. It grew back together but it was stiff. That may have been in ‘34 or ‘35. (I remember Houston showing me that stumpy weird finger when I was little)

Then Houston got emancipated to be a grown man so he could sign his own contracts. I took him to the courthouse.

After the war Momma and JoAnn went back to Arkansas where they lived with Daisy and Pete. Louise married Travis Presley after the war, December 13, 1946. They had a daughter, Diane.

Houston married Mildred Griffith, February 3, 1947. He was crazy about her. They had Linda, Tommy, Ricky, and Lisa.

We made Daddy divorce Momma and, marry Edna. He wanted JoAnn to visit him and stay overnight. He still lived with Edna but we thought it was wrong, so we told him. They were divorced April 4, 1945.

Edna told Louise that she herself was “a bag of candy for Tommie, a country boy who had children early in life.” Louise told her, “ Yeah, and you took our candy.”
Tommie never bought diapers or underclothes for JoAnn. But he helped everyone else, always moving people about.

Tommie married Edna and they ran a cafe outside Tyronza, The Red River Cafe on the other side of the levee. So I was told.

Momma died November 11, 1952. We had taken her to the doctor in Memphis during the war. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

JoAnn graduated from Marked Tree Highschool in 1953. She came to Memphis and stayed with us on Mallory where she met my neighbors, the Helms.

She and Roger began to date, and they married August, 1956. They had Lynne, Karen, and Allen.

Tommie Condrey died May 4, 1966.

In spite of his behavior and his abandonment of his family, his children did what they could for him, and just as Lummie taught them, they treated him with respect.

Odds and Ends - information and items my father didn’t know where to place:

Milk made JoAnn sick. They even tried buttermilk until they got the goat. 
Gyle didn't have his own still, but he assisted with one. He stashed bottles in numerous spots along the Creek. He “utilized” them often while working.

In 1941, Tommie made Lummie sell her portion of the Parker home place. She sold it to her brother Odel. The money went towards the debts accrued in Alabama.


The Harrell's made the best moonshine on Panther Creek.
Wilson Condrey was gay.
Tommie was sweet on Aunt Annie before he started courting Lummie.


Annie claimed she could have handled Tommie if they had married,
 but, she couldn’t even handle Gyle.
Billy Parker went to jail one year and one day, because he wouldn't marry Ruby Jo Webb. They were

cousins, and she had his baby.

Tom Parker married Mary Shaw, half sister of William Parnell.


And people didn't talk about sex. None.


Some photos I took of The Parker Home Place in 2015:

Dean Condrey’s Obituary:

Dean Condrey passed away April 4, 2009 at her home in Nesbit, MS. Ms. Condrey was born September 24, 1918 in Waterloo, Alabama. She was preceded in death by her parents Tommy Condrey and Lummie Parker Condrey; her brother Houston Condrey and sister Joann Helms. She is survived by her two daughters, Jeanette Teague of Hernando, MS and Martha Nichols of Batesville, MS; two sisters, Ms. Daisy Lansdale of Oxford, MS and Ms. Louise Presley of Southaven, MS; her sister-in-law, Ms. Mildred Condrey of Lake Providence, LA; brother-in-law, Roger Helms of Arlington, TN; nine grandchildren, Ricky Teague, Joyce Reaves, Liz Douglas, Rhonda Hoel, Marsha Henry, Betty Canankamp, Billy Henry, Bobby Henry and Andy Nichols; 17 great-grandchildren and 12 great-great-grandchildren.

Ms. Condrey survived the war and depression era. She went on to achieve a career in teaching and counseling at Alcohol and Abuse Programs in the Southern states. Upon retirement in 1979 she went to work for her grandson Ricky Teague at T & T Trucking, Inc. in Nesbit, MS as Director of Public Relations.