Family Secrets VI

Thanks to anyone who has actually been following this blog. It's hard to imagine it's been so long since not only making a family entry, but skipping months in addition: both signs that life has been a little intense. The following is the next segment in the real life family secrets handwritten tome by my grandfather's sister.

"I must say a few words about my youngest sister Agnes Batten she and her husband Earnest Batten reared one son Clarence E. Batten. he and his fine wife Evylen live at Smithers W.Va. at present they have two fine little girls. he drives one of those large tank TEXACO oil trucks. speaking of trucks I forgot to say that Gilman has been truck driver for the Applachain power co for over 20 years he recieved his 20 year pin with 4 real diamonds in it. one diamond for every five years this is a wonderful company and have sure been grand to him. I cant thank them enough for their kindness to him. Oh yes I forgot to tell you about my moving sister Ella. of course I think she takes it after our mother you remember I told you how she liked to move. Well Ella is a chip off the old block. she has moved so much, she is ashamed to call and have her utilities changed again I hope she will stay where she is for a while now. here is hoping so anyway.

Well getting back to my relatives I forgot to say I had another uncle Will Wees. he is younger than I believe uncle John well anyway, he married Ida Waters and they reared a family of children too. there was Bettie Grace Charlie and Elsia then he and his wife seperated. and some time after that he went down on Paint Creek at Morton, W. Va. and met a Mrs. Blizzard and married her. they were both good Christians and were very active in church work. but has now passed on. but they always lived away from us so we couldent visit very much with them. as I said be-fore I had an Aunt Susan and Uncle Tom Holt. he came from Ill. to these parts as a school teacher. so he and Aunt Sue got married. they also reared a family Ida, Lizzie, Clara Tommie Bessie and Vivian. they are the ones that lived on my mothers old home place high up on a mountain in the country. so this was always heaven to me to get to go up there and visit with them they always made you feel so welcome. I will always remember the good old days we spent to-gether when we were young. Clara and I are about the same age. Lizzie was older, she weighed over three hundred pounds. she died of dropsy. she was never married. Ida the oldest married Meltz Wiltshire. Clara married Grover Pack. Bessie married Ed Beasley. and Vivian married Basil Hinkle. I forgot who Tommie married. but he has passed on now too. Well enough of that I will now say a few things about our moving around. as I said when Dock and I were married we started house keeping on Sherwood Hill. there used to be a double row of houses on top of that hill. then there was a large company store along there where Mrs Carter lives now. but when the mines worked out the store and all those houses on top of the hill were torn down. and took away We moved off the hill down close to the mines. and here is where I lived when Gilman was born. in Mar. 5, 1911. Well we lived there until he was eight weeks old then we moved to Oswald. we lived there for some time then we moved to Price Hill then and from Price Hill to Skelton, then back to Price Hill. In the mean time Dock had a good friend that he ran around with. by the name of Charles Renick at that time Mrs. Renick was book keeper for New River Co. he owned two lots down at Dunbar W.Va so got to talking to Dock to buy one of his lots. he asked $5,00.00 for the one lot Well we talked it over and desided we would take it. he let us have it $10.00 down $10.00 per month, so after we had paid $150.00 on it we found out we couldent build a house on it under $2000.00 so he had a chance to sell his contract to a man for $250.00. so he sold it and then, he was talking with Mr. Garret at that time he was Squire Garret. he is Pat Garretts Dad - so he told Dock he had a house for sale. he told him he would sell it to him for $650.00 $100.00 down and $12.50 per month until he got it paid for. so that was the deal. we bought it and then in the mean time we had moved to another house at Price Hill. so we moved into our own house for once in a life time. it is now that old two story house back of a beer joint on the corner at the stop light. Well as I said we moved in after we got it cleaned up. A colored woman by the name of Lil Hill had lived in the house be-fore we moved in so it was a mess. full of filth and cockroaches well anyway we finally got it live-able so we lived there for eight years. we had very fine neighbors and a host of friends Mr. and Mrs. Ambros Lemasters, Charley Perry and wife Dachie Gus Pinson, and Maggie but it seemed Mrs. Lemasters and us were very close friends. I love her as a sister. and her Grand son as my own child. Clarence Wray was his name he and Gilman grew up to-geather they were just like brothers to one another Clarence's mother, Hazle. they always called her (Cat). was Mr. and Mrs. Lemasters only child. so they were very crazy about her. so she went to school here in Mt. Hope and she and her boy-friend eloped to-gether they went to Charleston and were married she wrote a letter right back to her parents tell them about it. they boys name was Clarence Wray a real fine boy. he worked in the mines at Derry Hale. they went to house keeping there. it hurt Mr. and Mrs. Lemasters very much. after they went to house keeping, Mrs. Lemasters would go down to see her most every day. then she rode the K. GJ and E. train. but her dad never did go. then they had been married a month or two when he was killed suddenly in the mines. A kettle bottom fell from the roof of the mines. so she got to come back home. she was pregnant with Clarence when the girl grieved and worried so much over her husband, her folks were as good to her and her baby as they could be. but she came down with T.B. and when Clarence was 15 months old, his mother died. so they buried her in Wild Wood Cemetary in Beckley W.Va. so Mr. and Mrs. Lemasters reared Clarence and was always good to him. he had a good home. he soon grew up and found him a mate by the name of Virgie Patton they were married. thier first child was born dead. but they have reared four more children. Carrol Hazle Clarence and Patty. Carrol is now married and lives in Texas-poor Virgie had a nervous break down and is in Ill. at present Clarence has to be Mother and Dad to the children. but after all they have made it. I think he has done a pretty good job after all I only hope and trust that things will turn out good for all of them. well enough of this."...

Independence Day, 2065

It is the year 2065; I am the granddaughter of one of many who fought in the last century for the personhood of women and children in the United States. This was a difficult and complicated war for my grandmother, because it involved exposing so many practices that went on behind closed doors the public was deliberately made unaware of, or laws were passed in the wake of tragedies that lawmakers of the time failed to recognize were taking away what Constitutional rights existed before and during the early days of the millennium.

What didn’t exist in the previous century was the enforcement of individual rights for women and children. In the Constitution, the word ’person’ means and had been acted out in the practice of law and government as ’household’. This meant most women and children had no individual rights when actual protection was needed under law. Because so many people were not aware of this or didn’t go through something knowingly where their personal rights or survival were at stake, only those who sought protection as a last resort for their safety or the safety of their children found out at the worst possible time that the result they expected from what they knew as law often rendered an opposite result. It was Alice in Wonderland or the Twilight Zone, only real, and unimaginable to anyone who had not gone through it themselves.

The mentality of the public, shaped by media, government, and organizations who stood to continue gaining from keeping the public thinking differently tried to make my grandmother and her contemporaries look like they were only acting for themselves. In the public eye, according to the media, what happened to them must have been from something they did wrong or was a ‘mistake’ that didn’t happen very often. To make things worse, when my grandmother was my age, the United States remained the only other country besides Somalia (which had no government) not to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The practices that affected my grandmother and the children of those like her did go on in other countries, though in others, they didn’t.

Then after the events of September 11, 2001, The Patriot Act practically took away all Constitutional rights, allowing those in power to control the lives of people in the country more than ever. The president at the time had been quoted as wishing he could be a dictator; this was as close as he could get to accomplishing that, and the damages from the act and other practices affected anyone who wasn’t wealthy for generations. Many children, women, and others who were struggling without help died from negligence or abuse, while the root causes for the deaths were covered up and those responsible were not made accountable.

It was mostly men in power and women who were uninformed or supportive of those men without their own knowledge or who thought they were benefiting from such support (unknowingly or otherwise at their expense) that carried out the damages without a second thought or conscience for the consequences of their actions. They remained unexposed until my grandmother with others like her came together after their children had lost their childhoods to these practices for so many years of ’legal’ manipulation at what was called a ’tipping point’. Families and those who could reach those in government and the media who had integrity and a conscience began to listen, and investigate just how many people had actually gone through the same thing. It was too many to ignore. Children had died or been abused in many ways for so many years it threatened the stability of the country to continue to turn a blind eye to what had been happening. There were people who went to prison for knowingly allowing the practices to continue or assisting in the continuation of how things had been because money had been involved as an incentive for so many, when children and their mothers were regarded as property under the practice of law (not to be confused with written law itself, which mothers thought when they needed protection would be followed).

It was at about the same time that women who wanted to be with women and men who wanted to be with men were given the right to marry each other, as well as a half century of resolution toward women being compensated for the same work the same amount of pay for their own living and the lives of their children that were given to men for many decades. This also affected their ability in how much they could provide for their children if they chose not to be married or seek the support of someone else in the home. The family composition at this time had permanently changed; married couples with children were no longer the rule, yet those in power acted as if anyone who did not embrace or aspire to the former ’ideal’ were not worthy in general.

Today, because of my grandmother and those like her who came together at a critical part in history, I can get an education, earn a living, be with who I want or not, and have a child if I want without being afraid that someone will take them for no reason and write things that aren’t true in a ’legal’ document so they may profit from ’selling’ children as property at women’s expense to wherever the money is coming from. My father was one of the children who were silenced until they were of ‘legal’ age to tell others in their own voices.

My grandmother always said she had learned her values from her grandfather, a Native American, who respected the rights of others regardless of whether they were rich or poor, and was honored in his community for the achievements of his life. Women who did the same weren’t given recognition because of the ’patriarchal’ society that rare men like my great great grandfather were able to do some good in. My grandmother never forgot the example of her grandfather, and I will not forget hers. She didn’t know she could not enjoy with her child, my father, the rights I now have because of their sacrifices until she needed help under ‘law‘. She spent the rest of her life so that my father and our children would not suffer further. The world still isn’t perfect. Because of people like my ancestors, more of us may survive in peace as well as prosper much earlier in life, and the damages to the planet from previous generations will continue to be reversed as my generation makes it their priority.

Apologies for the unplanned hiatus, the family saga will continue as promised during the next post. Happy 4th.