Daddy Hung Me Out the Window to See a Scary Fire; Butterflies, Losses, and Three Tickets to California

One afternoon when my dad was home and drunk, there was a fire in the drugstore, three stories below us. My dad wanted me to see the fire so he took me and swung me outside the window. It was a long way to the ground and I thought he was going to drop me. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see. But I can still remember the butterflies in my stomach. To this day I don’t like heights. After what seemed like a very long time, but was probably only a few moments, I found myself back inside the room and in my mother’s arms. We were both crying.  

I believe there were guardian angels on double duty that afternoon to keep me from falling. I read this to a Sunday school class of young children and they drew pictures of my early life. Here’s a couple pictures of this incident at the window with attending angels.

A couple other sad things happened during these early years. First my Grandma with the twinkle in her eye, who loved me so much, got sick and died. I wondered where she went when she died. My mom said heaven, but no one could tell me about it. Anyway, it made my mother cry for many days. This was the Grandma who was great, great…..granddaughter of Mordecai Lincoln. My grandfather had died when my mother was four. A large crane, at a construction site where he worked, broke and fell on him and killed him.

Also, my aunt and uncle loved us very much. But they decided to move far away to California. They were almost the only ones who visited us and gave me birthday presents. I remember on my fourth birthday they gave me 3 warm pair of slacks (it gets cold in Chicago). Another year, or maybe every year, they gave me a book. I studied and memorized the pictures and could tell the stories. I still have four books from my early years and I still love reading and children's books to this day: The Patchwork Quilt of Favorite Tales, The Littlest Angel, The Wizard of Oz, and The Adventures of Idabell and Wakefield.

So now the nomadic adventures really begin. My mom decided it would be better to move us away from all the screaming, hitting, and fighting. Uncle Bert and Aunt Hazel sent us three train tickets to California to be with them. God was providing a way out.

The three day train ride was fun-- so different than our little apartment. Even though I had just come down with the mumps right before we left, my mother put a scarf around my head and sneaked my sister (who later came down with the mumps too) and I out of the apartment forever and ever. We never saw it again.