One might say that he treated us with benign neglect. He occupied his time while home sitting on the uncovered cement veranda in his rocking chair reading his newspaper. He never disciplined us, talked much with us, played with us, or helped us in any way. Nor was he ever mean or cruel to us. He knew how desperately I wanted a bicycle. One weekend he unexpectedly arrived home in a taxi with a used bike for me. It became my prized possession as a kid. Another time when neighbours invited me to a church social, he suddenly handed me five dollars to spend. But mostly, he was just there, like a dead man walking. Neighbours viewed Dudey as a useless, pathetic failure who had frittered away his life and barely able to provide for his family.
Our mother, on the other hand, was a spitfire who took control of us kids, and pulled out all the stops to provide for us as best she could while living a poverty-stricken life in a four-room, uninsulated house with no bathroom or running water. The only drinking water was from a shallow well about 200 yards from the house. During the cold winters, my brothers and I would often have to fill a wash tub with snow, haul it into the house, and pack it into the double boiler on the wood stove to melt for use in washing. I have always remembered the thrill I felt on the special day in late spring when my mother announced we were moving our day-to-day living quarters to the woodshed attached to the back of the house for the summer. I loved the switch each time. It was my summer cottage!
Although uneducated, my mother was very intelligent and could turn her hand expertly to many things such as vegetable gardening (her specialty), cooking, baking, preserving, sewing, knitting, and preparing home remedies when we became ill. She helped us with our homework, made our clothes, making sure we had warm clothing to wear during the cold winter months. She made us decent lunches with her own homemade bread to take to school, a one-room building, 2 miles away along a dirt road.
The neighbors liked and respected her, and so were very good to us. I do not remember ever feeling hungry, unhappy, or poor as a kid. I grew up being very close to her. I recall spending happy times helping her to plant the vegetable garden and picking wild strawberries and raspberries in fields beyond our house. And I do remember her patience and persistence in helping me master long division, a math exercise that seemed to baffle me, causing me tearful nights until I grasped the idea. I can still solve long division problems with pencil and paper to this day.
