Pictured below: Raymond in the military
and below that Raymond in 2001

Momma Cried

We had moved in a circle. At the time of this incident , we lived back in the old house on the hill neighbors to Grandma over looking the corn field that were adjacent to Blue River.. Everytime we moved Mama cried. She said "Well we have to move again, Ike just can't get along with anybody."

My little brother Raymond was the Baby and still crawling and hadn't learned to walk real good yet. It was sort of my job to take care of him. We had a little red wagon which sometimes I would haul him around in. When my brothers and cousins would decide to go play in Blue River I would ask mother "Mom can I go wtih them ? " to which she would reply "only if you take Raymond with you and take care of him." that always made me glad we had the wagon , that made it a lot easier for me.

One day Raymond disappeared and we could not find him. Mother asked the question " Does anyone know where Raymond is?" We looked looked under the beds , in the closet, under the house, in the barn, in the out house, in the chicken house, in the gravel pir,(this was a dry pit)....no Raymond. Having already lost one Baby at six months of age she became frantic. "Oh that kid has fallen in the spring."she said. "Somebody go look and see if he's fallen in the spring." This would mean certain death by drowning because the if he fell in head first there would be no way he could get out . This had happened to a child recently and we had just heard about it.

We looked and were very glad to report to her that he was not in the spring. And then suddenly we heard her laughing and crying at the same time. "Come here ." she said , "you have to see this." And there was Raymond sitting inside the wilson heater and it appeared he was eating ashes. She had heard him say "huh "huh" and opened the door and there he was. (as I explained in a recent article a Wilson Heater sits close to the floor enough so that he could just open the door and crawl in. )

The Rest of the story

I did not know until I was in my seventies what really happened that day. Raymond said he was crawling on the floor one day, there was no one else around and an animal came across the floor , carrying it's little ones on it's back and snarling at him. He was so scared and wanted to get away to safety, He was near the stove so he just opened the door and crawled in . The possum? went on out the front door of our house and did not bother him. Of course he was too young to know it was a possum at that age, but later in life he surmised it must have been a possum.