Choppy seas: In the creek, wreck #1

Penned June 23, 2021

Prompt: choppy seas

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The story goes that Mom and Dad eloped. 

Mom's name was Flo Rae. She was the next to youngest of ten living siblings. Would have been twelve, but two others died young. A boy whose name was Timmy, I think. And an infant, who was just called "the infant." Mom grew up in Balls Creek, North Carolina, on a family farm. Her daddy, Ed, worked at the sawmill. Mom told me that one time John Dillinger parked in their gravel driveway. 

Dad's name was Albert Watkins, named (in part) after his great uncle, Albert Galiton Watkins, a lawyer and pro-confederate politician who served at least one term  in the US House. Dad was the youngest of three boys. His brothers' names were John and Fred. 

As I was growing up, Uncle Fred was my favorite uncle. He was a photographer and lived in Daytona Beach. He owned a Jaguar; and Aunt Lucille, his wife, owned a talking parrot that would sing Dixie. Aunt Lucille helped Uncle Fred in his photography business; she applied the paint touch-ups to enhance color in the photographs, before the days of real color photography. Fred and Lucille had three children -- Freddie, Linda, and Suzy, all older than me. I had a crush on Freddy. Linda and Suzie were on lots of Daytona Beach post cards made from photos that Uncle Fred took. Tourists bought the post cards. Linda looked like Cher, the singer. 

At some point Dad moved to Hickory, in his later teens or maybe early 20s. He and Mom met I don't know where. But they eloped when Dad joined the Coast Guard and was going to be sent to New York City. 

Story goes that after they eloped, they went back to Momma's farm house. Mom's family had a meeting discussing whether or not they'd allow the marriage to be. Mom and Dad were put in an upstairs bedroom while the rest of the family talked it out in the dining room. Mom took an empty drinking glass and laid the open end on the hardwood floor and placed her ear on the bottom of the glass so she could hear the discussion downstairs. My Grandpa Ed, who was apparently a man of few words, ended the discussion with, "They made their bed, let them sleep in it." And that was that. 

Mom moved with Dad to NYC and got a job working as a bank teller in the Empire State Building while Dad went off to help monitor the Eastern Seaboard during WWII. He was a radar operator.

When I look at their old photos, Dad was quite handsome and Mom quite pretty. Mom's hair was wavy-curly and dark. She was light-skinned with blue-grey eyes. I don't know if her curls were natural, but maybe that's where I got my wavy-curly hair. Dad had a lean, strong, chiseled face. He had dark hair, high cheek bones, dark olive skin, and brown eyes. Mom always said he was part Cherokee, coming from western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. But I don't know if that's the case. I don't know how much any of the stories are the case. 

After the war, Mom and Dad moved to Daytona Beach and lived there for some 15 years. That's where they started our family. All three of us kids were born there. My sister Becky. My brother Ted. And me. I was the youngest. 

I'm not sure if it was in Florida or New York where the first bad wreck happened, but I think it was in Florida. I think that's maybe when the shape of Dad's forehead and face changed, from less chiseled to more round. 

The wreck happened before Mom and Dad started the family. Story goes, when they crashed, they landed in a creek. Mom had to use a paper straw to suck blood out of Dad's throat. After the ambulance arrived, Dad was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery on his head. A metal plate was implanted in his forehead. He was in coma for some three weeks.

In my late teens I asked Dad about his coma. He said he had a vision just before waking up. He met Jesus in a field under a lone tree, and Jesus said, "It's time to wake up now."