Joe: My mother had 14 children in less than 20 years and some of the older brothers and sisters said that every time my mother was going to have a baby, my father would take off on a trip of some kind.  He was never there when she would have the babies. I understand from the older brothers and sisters that she had a hard time having the babies. I believe they said Dr. Gladden of Western Grove delivered every one of us babies. In fact, his son is in the practice in Harrison now. His is the new doctor in Harrison. (1986)

Joe: Another story that Molly was telling me was that when I was 6 months old, I was only 10 lbs, and my mother didn't have enough milk.  It was in the winter time when I was born and they couldn't get enough food down me.  They said if it hadn't been for Lena, I would have probably died.  But Lena took me up and carried me around and took care of me and tried to feed me.  I told this to Lena at the 1986 reunion and she was thrilled to hear the story, and she said she use to love to take care of me and carry me around because when she would squeeze me and hold me I would hug her around the neck and she liked that very much.  

After hearing this, Lena started talking about some of the things that she did when she was young.  Lena said that Molly was a year younger than her and everyone was always bragging about Molly being pretty, and Molly this, and Molly that...and they would never say anything about Lena, even if she was standing next to Molly.  Lena wished she could be pretty like Molly, she was always going up to the mirror and looking at herself to see if "she was pretty yet." So

this one time, her mother and dad were in the big truck loading al the kids up to go someplace.  Lena ran back in the house to look in the mirror at herself to see if "she was pretty yet", and there was a molasses bucket right under the mirror that the kids use to stand on to see in.  Lena stepped up on the bucket, and her foot fell right through into the molasses and got all over her shoe.  When our father found out about this, we were going to the river and he told Lena that she was to keep that shoe on her foot all day long and wasn't to wash it in the river or anything as punishment. (7-15-1986)