July 30th, 2010

Eva Morgan Moore 's Story

Birth Year: 1939




Table of Contents





     I had a very rough start in life

    My name is  Eva Joyce ( Freeman) Morgan Moore and I was born on 8/9/1939, DEAD! It could have been much, much worse. I could have stayed that way! My mother was in hard labor and she was having me at the home of my grandmother. My grandmother was there. Also my aunt along with the doctor who was an older gentleman. My mother was in bad shape I guess because of the long labor. As I was told the doctor could not get me to breath and said I would be sure to die. So he handed me over to my grandmother who was helping and said, “Wrap her up in a sheet or something and let her die, She is dead!”.

    Well my grandmother wrapped me up as directed in a blanket and laid me in the oven of her wood burning cook stove, with the door left open, to keep me warm.  As little time past and someone heard a whisper of a whimper or squeak out of me and I am here today to talk about it almost 69 years later.

    I was born at home in Garner, Arkansas which is about 6 miles from Mcrae, Arkansas. There two towns are north east of Little Rock. Just northeast of Beebe, Arkansas.

    I had 7 sisters and one brother. I have 2 brothers that did not make it. One of them would have been about the age of my son James. My mother and I were pregnant at the same time. The first of the two boys that past, well he only lived to about 8 months old.

    When I was about 6 years old I got locked in an ice box that we would put out for the Ice Company. It took awhile for my mother to find me. I was locked in and could not get out. When she did find me I was nearly dead. But I am still here. There was this one girl that got into a box and got locked in and she did die. The parents were talking about it and didn’t realize that the kids were listening and processing as it is and I thought I could get out. Well I couldn’t! I did because mom found me but as it turned out I nearly had the same fate as that other poor girl.

    We were just a country family working in the crops. My dad was a farmer out in the country. The town we lived closest to was McGehee, Arkansas, down south, about 10-11 miles from the Mississippi river and state border. I was about 4-5 when we moved from Mcrae to this smaller town. We never lived anywhere else other than that surrounding area when I was a girl.

     

    When it came time to move, I MOVED!

    I was 16 at that time. Our family was living in McArthur when I met my husband. We had moved into his community and he had come home on leave. I think things happen just the way they are supposed to. If we had never moved into that area we would never have met. But we did and two years later when he got out of the service we got married.

    He was working out at the ice house when we met and he quit that job and talked to this man who needed some help. So he took up work in the cotton fields because they needed workers. He had a house that we could move in so we went and moved into that house in McArthur. We stayed there a few months and then moved up the road to another one.

    I got married August 17th 1958 at the age of 19.

    My other experiences were having my kids! I had 4 children. I currently have 7 grand children with another on the way. I wanted to be a mommy when I grew up. It all worked out and I don’t think I could ever end that chapter of my life.

    I was a housewife or domestic Engineer as they say today. I took care of my husband and the kids. We moved around a lot as my husband Joe found work. We lived in McArthur until Joe went to college. So we up and moved to Monticello, AK. We lived in this area for a while, as Joe attended school. When he got out of school in about a year, we must have lived in 2-3 different houses. I had my son James at this time. My husband got another job over in Lake Village right by the river in the south east corner of the state. My husband was working for a Spindle Company making spindles for the cotton pickers. We were living here when Trista was born. He was not getting enough money or hours here at that time. So he got another job working in the salt factory in Greenville. This is where he got his apprenticeship for being a Saw Smith. This became his lifelong occupation.

     When my son Blake was just 10 months old we left there because he was not getting enough pay. They were supposed to give him a raise but it never came. So we moved again, this time to Columbia, South Carolina. We lived here about two years. Nothing was happening there for work. My husband was giving but they were not giving back. So we up and went back to Greenville, Arkansas where he got a hold of a Saw Company in Memphis. That’s how we ended up in Millington, Tenn. My son Blake turned 2 years old there in Millington. I guess we stayed here a year of more.

    We moved to another place where they had a little old stop in the road. There was a mill there and it was called 5 roads. Now when we finally left here we moved to Indiana. I wish we could have stayed there in Indiana. This was back in February of 1968. It was freezing cold and the water pipes froze in the house when we were moving in. That’s the way we got to meet our neighbors. They let us have some water. We had to get it to go! But anyway,

    We stayed here until 1974 when we moved to Morristown. That is going east on hwy 52 out of Indianapolis. Lord if we could have skipped that place we would have been better off. Yet we stayed here about 2 more years.

    In 1976 I was living in a town called Louisville.

     

    Working for a living

    I guess in all my life if I could share my one piece of philosophy it would be:

    “All that glitters ain’t gold!”

    It ain’t fun getting old with all the aches and pains. I am not really afraid of getting old or death. But there is always this survival instinct that kicks in when you find yourself in danger of getting hurt or killed. Death is inevitable. You aren’t begging for it mind you. I worry more about my husband’s death than I do my own. You see if something happened to me he could survive. If something happened to him, well I just don’t know. I am sure I would get the help I need.

    We have been together 50 years now come August 17th. That’s a long time!

    You know, “It ain’t much to sum up your life in about 15 -20 minutes”.

    “So I would like to know how you would sum yours Up?”

    I have heard my son say, “forgiveness! Don’t hold on to the crap that doesn’t matter”. Well I have tried to practice that in my life quite a bit. But it all just seems to pile on in on you at times when you least expect it.

    I have had some regrets. One that I was not a bit stronger person on behalf of my kids. So if I could do it all again I would be a stronger person.

    Now without digging into it very deep I don’t think there is anything I would not have done. I guess as you get older and look back and the old adage applies. “If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

    But I wouldn’t go a whole year without seeing Chester again. I would have gone down there to Natches and seen him instead of just talking on the phone.

    I would sum up the rest with the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I had my youngens and I married my husband. Of course I did that first!

    I had a wonderful mother and grandmother in my life. These were two of my favorite women in the whole world. My grandmother’s name was Thursie Schanche. She was Thursie Cross before she married.

    Mother’s maiden name was Cross. Her full name was Ester Day Cross. It was back during the war years she got a job making bombs or something and she needed a middle initial for the payroll in order to get the pay check. So she came up with Day. Your aunt did the same thing. She did have a middle name, May. Well she didn’t like the name. So when it came time to graduate in high school on her graduation card she changed her name to Annette. So it became, Claudia Annette Moore.

     

    And her daddy’s mother was a twin. Ester and Effie. When they were 11 months old her twin died and about 3 months after that their daddy died. So this left grandmother with 5 kids. This all happened when times were really, really bad. Grandmother’s last two births were twins. There were two girls one of them was my mother. Aunt Trudy (real name Pauline) and Uncle Paul were the other twins. When the girls were 8-9 years old grandmother married a man named Schanche.

     

    Aunt Trudy told me that there were times when they literally went without food. They had relatives and such but no help at all. Grandmother would clean houses and do whatever it took to put food on the table.

    Grandmother was about 84 when she passed away and mother was about the same age when she died.