There’s Moving and Then There’s ‘MOVING’
Started; June 22,2021, Finished; December 9, 2023

A friend recently told me that statistically most people move about 10 or 11 times in their lifetime. Wow! Once I started to put the facts together, there was no doubt I had that beat by over a mile.

I was born in Billings, MT where my Mother and Father moved not less than twice, most likely more times. After my Sister was born they decided to pack up and go to Alaska planning to homestead eighty acres on a GI Bill. They made it to Tacoma, Washington. Their plans did not take into account the weather in Alaska in the Autumn. Dad took a job at Boeing in Seattle. They settled in an apartment that some might call ‘The Projects’ today. I guess parking was at a premium and I would hope that my Dad’s squabble over a parking space was not the only incident. His incident, was different from others, though. He didn’t live to have another argument.

So it was from Tacoma back to Billings, MT to bring Dad home to his Mother and bury him. After a short while it was back to St. Joseph, MO, where her Mother was waiting with open arms. In St. Joseph we lived a short while with Grandma and Grandpa on N. 12th St. Mom used income from her job and Life Insurance to buy a place on E. Valley. I think we may have lived there almost two years.

There was a big two story house with about an acre of land, next door to Grandma and Grandpa. It had been damaged in a fire, but was for sale cheap and able to be fixed. We moved there with Mom’s younger Sister, husband and kids in 1953 I believe, back to N. 12th. Mom met her second husband, he was the carpenter hired to fix the house, they married and we moved to a little motel on 69 Hwy. We could see Quaker Oats nearby and hear the trains calling in the night. I still like the sound of the old train whistles.

From there we moved to a duplex on Felix St. My Uncle and Aunt owned and lived in the other side of the ‘double tenement’ which is what people used to call a duplex. After the birth of my Brother in 1954, we left Felix St. and moved to E. Market, still in St. Joseph, MO. It was a small house, but they bought it cheap and the Step Dad was able to convert it from one bedroom to three, with a closed in utility porch and under the house garage. We lived there nine years.

Suddenly in 1963, my step father sold that home and moved us all to Nodaway County. Skidmore, MO was our address officially, but we were surrounded on three sides by Cornfield and a Wheat Field across the road, in the Boonies was the truth of it. The house was a very old shanty that had been turned into a hay barn. He took Sister and I early in 1963 to clean it up. The mice and birds had taken up in it and their leavings were every where. Eventually, when school was over for the summer, we moved in. The Spring, Summer and Fall were not horrible. Not having any running water was not great. We hauled water from the Uncles farm three miles away and about once it week it was hot water so we could take a bath in a wash tub in the kitchen or back porch. There were seven of us kids. I begged to be the first and was usually chastised as selfish, because of it.

In a few months (Dead of Winter) Mom was pregnant for the ninth time in her life. I had pneumonia. The old house was much too drafty and the coal and wood stoves did not keep it adequately warm. Planning on having ample coal and wood on hand was lacking to non existent. So, Mom moved herself and we children back to St. Joe, MO. In a major winter storm. We spent a week with the Aunt and Uncle on Felix St. Fourteen kids and three adults in a four room shotgun duplex. Finally, we were able to move in old but sturdy two story home on N. 20th St. It was here she brought another sibling home. A baby sister. I was fascinated for the first time by a baby and in love.

It wasn’t long after that, Step Father talked her into moving back to a place just up the road from the other. A better home, but still no running water and burning wood for heat. BACK to the Boonies, called Skidmore (that’s where that evil bully was mysteriously shot to death in the middle of town and no one saw anything) Missouri. I didn’t come with them until a few months later. My Step Father didn’t want me there. Somehow, his marital problems were my fault. I did however have to leave the home they all thought best for me. The woman I babysat for and who pretended that she was my older sister. Her and her hubby were very disturbed people and I was lucky to get away with only a bald spot on my head from being dragged by the hair from one room to the next. That and a very bruised soul.

So, here I am persona non grata in my Step Father’s home once again. Although, I did my best to not be fuel to his fire, it just worked in differently. His darkness was applied in an assault on my Mother. She had me go to the Uncle and Aunt and find another place to live in St. Joe. Less than one year and again in the winter, she moved us back to St. Joe, MO on S. 14th St, 1964. It was in 1965 while living here, my Step Father came to visit Mom and the kids. He was beyond rude when I came in the door that night. I had just worked 12 hours at the Sunny Slope Nursing Home and in no mood to deal with him. I left, stayed with my best friends Mother for a few days and found a three room furnished apartment for ten dollars a week near the courthouse in St. Joe. I was only 16. Yes, it was scary and I was determined to make it work however.

My best friends Mother found out and wasn’t having any of that and moved me back in with her.  A few months later Mom left S. 14th and moved to S. 12th St, 1965. I moved in with her at that time. Life got really complicated (can you believe that) and I was forced to quit school and forced into a tuberculosis hospital in Mt. Vernon, MO,  November 1965. My Step Father was there as well. He died there March of 1966.

I moved to St. Louis in April 1966 and was married in two short weeks after getting there, married to the young man I had met at Mt. Vernon, MO. We were living with my Sister and Brother in law in Florissant, MO for a split second. There’s an old saying about two women under the same roof, it ain’t good! Well, I really was still a kid at 17, but it wasn’t working for my Sister in Law or me and I talked my new husband into moving back to St. Joe, MO on S, 12th St. living with my Mom. He was getting paid to do some body work training and got a job as well. He and I rented a little bungalow, the St. name is long forgotten. We didn’t live there long enough to get a light bill.

My young husband took us back to Florissant, MO to his Sister’s home, again. In a few months he and I found a furnished two room apartment, sharing a bathroom in Overland, MO. We were there a couple of months or so. I felt more grown up and enjoyed cooking for my husband. But , that was too far from his family, so in a short while we moved next-door to my hubby’s older brother and his wife in a three room shotgun type apartment, furnished and again a shared bathroom. It was crazy on weekends because the apartments were located over a bar and there was a game they played in the alley way. it was like baseball only with a broom stick and bottle caps. I used to sit in the window and watch while my husband was at work. That lasted only a few months and my Father in Law, who had been renting out a house in Berkley, MO, had tenants move out, owing rent and leaving a nasty dirty mess of filth and cockroaches. He talked us into taking up the payments on it and after extensive cleaning, painting and roach extermination, we moved there.

In 1967 we talked my Mother and siblings minus one (she was in Job Corp), into moving there with us. Well it lasted until March of 1968, I was finally pregnant and my husband decided I wasn’t being nice enough to him (had morning sickness and was puking every time I cracked an egg, trying to fix him breakfast). His words and deeds, that day, left me physically battered and mentally upset, so I moved my Mom and Siblings back to St. Joe, MO on S. 12th St.

My husband quit his job, followed me there, we reunited and found a wonderful apartment north and east of my Aunt and Uncles place by about a mile and a half (memory is faded ). It was the whole top of a huge old home. Converted into a sunny lovely home, even if there were a hundred steps to climb on the outside of the home. We were actually happy for a few months. Then his Father, Brother and Uncle came to visit. It was a drunk fest! They talked him into going back to St. Louis County. His intent was to leave me with my Mother and just go. I was seven months pregnant and let him know that after him wanting me to be that way for nearly two years I was not going to be dumped on my Mother’s doorstep. So, off we go, back to Florissant, MO and the Sister and Brother in Laws home.

We were there until about a month after the birth of my Oldest son. We moved to Normandy, MO where we shared a house with my Father in Law and Brother in Law and all the drinking buddies every weekend. We did make it a home and lived there from November 1968 to April of 1971. My Daughter was born and I my life was taking care of two babies 14 months apart and three men who were like babies every weekend with their drunken family and friends who came EVERY weekend. I had my fill and had already had a taste of being independent and happy in that sunny, top floor apartment in St. Joe. I wanted that again. Finally I was able to convince my husband that he and I and our two children would be happier on our own without any one else living with us.

We bought our first home on Mueller St., Ferguson, MO. A small one bedroom bungalow with a huge fenced in yard and an old apple tree. It was really too small for our little family, but it was definitely too small for anyone else to move in with us! We lived there from April 1971 to October 1975. My third child and second son was born while we were there in 1972. There were other things going on that caused this to be a less than stellar home-site.

Lambert Airport was only a couple miles away as the crow flies. Conversations were stopped until the planes passed over. The decibles were dangerously high. I worried about the little ones more than myself. Our neighborhood was about as close to 50/50 racially as any neighborhood at that time. Our neighbors weren’t the problem. It was outsiders/realtors who were trying to stir up the tensions. Everything from redlining to molatave cocktails being pitched over roofs just about the time school buses were pulling up to let the little ones off. We pretty much caved in, when a realtor approached us about selling we agreed, but wanted a decent home as well to seal the deal.

You may be asking now about why the realtor? This area had been speculated and targeted by the airport. Targeted for possible expansion and buffer areas. There were a lot of complaints about the noise. It was expected that they were possibly going to offer extremely good selling options to those land owner. So, dirty tricks and shenanigans were done by realtors and others to gain access of the property in advance of any such happening. We sold for exactly what we owed, plus the cost of our home improvements we were still paying on. We did get a home that was nicer and bigger, in a better neighborhood, with no down payment, so it wasn’t a total loss. That brings us to S. Marguerite, Ferguson, MO.

We lived there, had another son there, did PTA, baseball (me and the kids), soccer, Boy Scouts, Coed Explorers and more. I bowled in a league for twelve years, for awhile it was twice a week. We fixed our home to suit ourselves. We had birthday parties, Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings. We helped one of my Sisters and her daughter get started in St. Louis County and a Brother as well.

My kitchen garden was the talk of the neighborhood and when I left thirteen years later, it was the only thing that made me sad. My roots were in that garden. Because, along with all the traditional, normal things of a family, we still had the drunkenness and that comes with it. Shame and embarrassment, guilt, because it was all my fault to hear it told. So came Alanon and AA to add to the activities of life. Alanon showed me that although some people choose to stay with their alcoholic, it was their choice and Alanon was there for support. But it’s “Take what you need and leave the rest” that I was hearing. I didn’t have to be abused and accused. I had a right to take a stand and ask for better. I took me a couple of years, August 1987 was the time of the Mt. Vesuvius, eruption. By October of 1988, divorce was in the works and I removed myself physically from lava flow. This takes us to Linn Creek, MO.

Let me backtrack here a bit, my husband left us around September 1987. I had given him the ultimatum. He wasn’t up for the task, his priorities were many miles from mine and it was just easier for him to leave us. I maintained, silently for about three months. One of my friends I hadn’t talked to for a while called me out of the blue. It was emotional overload, I spilled every sorry detail, sobbing the whole time. She was pretty much my savior. She gave me the strength to carry on, build a new and better life.

I contacted another good friend, who had a similar situation a few years before and had moved to Lake of the Ozarks. She and her new husband were another hand up for me. In their big ole, horse trailer, they moved me to Linn Creek, MO, that was October 15, 1988. My neighbors at S. Marguerite, watched, thinking I had lost my mind. The truth is I had found it.

This was not the end of finding my way! From Linn Creek, several months later, we found Iberia, MO and an older 1930ish home on seven acres and a tall hill. We were there about a year and my new husband’s family needed his assistance at the BBQ Restaurant his Father owned Gravois Mills, MO. This move was the only one I cried over. I love my country home, acreage for the horse, we now owned and my chickens. I did set in the middle of the empty living room our last few hours there and bawled my eyes out. That was April 1990.

As often happens with families; It didn’t work out! Come July of 1990 we moved to Macks Creek, MO. The very first Mobilehome I ever lived in! It wasn’t horrible, but definitely not how I had been accustomed to living. So, as soon as out landlord could get it fixed up and available we moved into a real house, just up the road. That was Spring of 1991. We enjoyed this place. We had room for horses, a large garden, chickens, geese and we even utilized the old one story barn as a rabbit growing facility for meat rabbits. That was a very laborious but educating and eventually, heartbreaking experience. We made more money on the manure after closing the business down, than we had ever made raising the animals. After we were there ten years, renting, we found a place in Dallas County, Missouri we could buy.

Buffalo, MO March 2000, we signed papers on ‘Little Prairie Home’. Nearly five acres, plenty of room for our growing horse herd. Molly, Ginger, Dandy and their two foals moved with us in July 2000. What an rough move that was! We were so exhausted, that we forgot our wedding anniversary for the first on only time that year.

Just over twenty years we spent there. The main part of the home was over 100 years old, with additions added throughout the years. It needed a lot of work, for us to move into it and that work continues onward throughout our time there. The house was old, we were old and couldn’t do the DIY stuff anymore. Plus, the cost was bigger than our cash flow could handle.

We made the decision to move to a rental home. Staying in Dallas County was really important to us. And we tried… However, our pets were important, too. Find a pet friendly place that was affordable and large enough, was very difficult. We searched nearly the entire year of 2020 (COVID didn’t help) and come September, found an older but nice doublewide in a mobile home park in Springfield, MO. I even had an immense flower garden established and fenced in area for our pups. We were moved in by October 15, 2020. For the third time in my life, horse trailers moved all my earthly possessions many miles to a new to us abode. AND that is Well Over 10 or 11 moves in a lifetime!

We are still here, there’s no such thing as ‘problem free’, but we hope this is our last move EVER! Well, the only other destination will be to property we own in New Hope Cemetery Louisburg, Dallas County, MO.