| Grown-up Stories They were were married on April 14th in 1924 in the Duval County Courthouse here in Jacksonville and immediately set out for my father's hometown of Macclenny in Baker County, Florida.
Here pictured is the house of my great grandfather, Jesse Daniel Mobley. It is there that they spend their "honeymoon" in a room upstairs. That first night they were "serenaded" with pots and pans. My mother got mad and wanted to take a shotgun to them. My father considered that impractical and said "If you can't beat'em, join'em." So they stuck out the back and around; and, there in the darkness, beat pots and pans for a while too. When the others realized what was happening, they had a good laugh and left! Walter came along the next January.  The
birth was at home as was
usual at the time. It was a very difficult delivery. Walter's
head came out about halfway and stayed that way for several
hours. My mother's sister-in-law and cousin, Della, became
hysterical.
My mother had been badly frightened by a mad dog a couple of months before. The dog had came after her to the exclusion of anyone or anything else; and, only stopped when someone mercifully ended its life with a shotgun. For several weeks thereafter, she kept replaying the episode in her mind; and, each time she looked into the darkness, he would take shape, couched low, teethed bared, ready to spring! By the time Walter was born, she had calmed down; but, the dog had been a dark brown sort of color and so was the baby's hair! Della kept screaming: "She's marked that baby! She's marked that baby!" And, I know from personal experience that woman, I liked her a lot; but, she had a voice that could cut glass! You might think it only happened in bad country stories, and maybe this is one; but, the young company doctor was clearly over his head and finally told my father he could either "save her or the baby." My father said "Save her;" but our mother started screaming "No, don't let my baby die;" and, somehow, no one seems to remember just how, Walter was born. The doctor took one quick look at him, said "He's dead." and threw him over on an old chair and turned to work on our mother some more because, by this time, she was bleeding quite a lot; but, she started screaming again and tried to get up and over to where the baby lay. My father handed her the baby thinking maybe that would calm her down. It was at this point, the doctor took another look at the child and pulled something which my mother described to me as "green slime" from his mouth. Then Walter took his first breath and started crying! His head was misshapened for quite a while thereafter due to our mother's body having been enclosed around it so tightly for so long; but, eventually it became a normal shape. Walter lived until July of 1990 when he died of a
heart attack bought on by cancer. When he died, our mother was
understandably quite upset. Also, by that time, her mind
wasn't very good. She kept talking about "her poor baby
dying so young." Finally I reminded her that Walter
wasn't really quite old; but, he had not been so young
either. Then she said "Oh, that's different!" |
