Suzzanne Carlson

MY STORY

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The time is 04:33:52am

Forward

1) Maroa

2) Hollywood

3) Decatur

4) Okeechobee

5) Spunky Pre-Teen

6) Freshman Year

7) Sophomore Year

8) Junior Year

9) Senior Year

10) After School

11) Failure to Insanity

12) Half Way Down

13) Darkest of Times

14 Was this a light?

15) Where Are YOU?

16) The Road Back!

17) New Adventures

18) Comfort Zone!

19) Goin' Truckin'!

20) Life after Wealth!

21) Til Death do us Part!

Dedications



Maroa, Illinois
EARLY CHILDHOOD

My first really clear memory is being around 3. I was with Mom and Dad and we were looking at a house they wanted to buy. We walked in and the first thing I saw was the stairs leading to the upper level bedrooms. There was a curve at the top, and I tugged on Mom's coat and said "Look Mommy, that is where I can hide." I didn't know what I was hiding from, it was just a good place to hide. I found a lot of little places to hide in that house, during 7 years we lived there.

I have many fond memories of that house. I have some not so fond memories of that house. Love, Laughter, Sadness, Pain, all these things that helped to form my personality, and to shape how I looked at the world. I will admit, I was sheltered.

I loved being the star of the show at home. If there was an audience I was performing. Singing, playing a character like on TV. I tried so hard to be funny. Oddly now, I have no sense of humor. The family was always a captive audience. They all made me feel special. They all made me feel loved.

I cherished the 'get togethers', when outside family members would come to visit. It never dawned on me they were not all truly 'family', but close friends also. They would come and play cards, or just for dinner. When my Dad's family came they usually brought intruments with them, which meant music in the air. I loved music. My Dad always played the bones. Yes! They were real bones from a pig's ribs. He had made them himself, by drying the bones, sanded them down, polished them and finally oiled them to a shine. I loved to hear him 'rattle them bones'.

I didn't like it much when the big people around me argued. Not just Mom and Dad. There were a few times I remember when there was a lot of yelling.

One time Mom and Dad were yelling at each other. Mom told Dad to get out! Dad then told her she could get out! Dad also said if she left she had to leave the kids. She would never see us again. He would send us all off to a 'boring school'. I didn't know what that was, but I didn't want to go anywhere Mommy wasn't going to be. I cried really hard, and Debbie (my third sister) and Sonnie (my brother) put their arms around me and told me it would be okay. Debbie told me she would never leave me. She would always take care of me - and she DID.

Another time this guy Skip came over. He was always around. I didn't really know what kind of family he was, but everyone loved him, so I did too.

Dad and Mom were yelling again and along with Skip and my oldest sister Janie. I don't know what they were yelling about, but a week or so later they were getting married and everyone seemed happy. I guess they were yelling about what kind of cake to have or something. Next thing I know I am not the baby anymore, I am just "Old Aunt Sue". That new little person cried a lot.

Mom had a shop across the street where she sold yard sale kind of stuff. It was also where we kept boxes of stuff that people gave us.

Someone gave us a boxes and boxes of Kraft Marshmallow Cream. It was a new thing and I guess they wanted us to tell them if it was any good. In the evening when we were together watching TV, we all had our own jar to eat. It was messy but it sure was good. I was kind of sorry when the last box was empty.

Sonnie got a guitar. After that there were all these boys that started coming around all the time. This one guy they called Shorty, he was the biggest man I had ever seen, I could not understand why they called him Shorty. He played the guitar and sang. Sonny played what was called a base guitar. A guy named Dave played the drums. I liked Dave, he made me laugh. Mom made a painting of a Joker from a deck of cards and put it on Dave's drums. That was the name of my brother's band.

They played some songs that I really liked. One these songs was called "Little Brown Shack". I thought that sounded like the perfect hiding place. "Hang on Sloopy" was another one I really liked, but I have no idea why. Then there were the ones that just made me laugh like "One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater". I was safe from him, since he only ate Purple People, and I wasn't Purple. MY FAVORITE was a song by Johnny Cash, called "A boy named Sue!" They wrote a song about me, or so I thougt it would me, as soon as I turned into a boy. Not sure how long that would take though.

There was one night that a building caught on fire. The Fire Station was just two doors down from our house, and the building that was full of fire, was around the corner, right next Mom's shop.

I was so scared that Mom's shop would burn too, but Debbie reminded me of a TV show we watched. A boy prayed to a mustard seed not to let his horse be sick.

I ran up to the bedroom window where I could still see the fire burning and I prayed "Mustard Seed! Mustard Seed! Please save Mom's shop".

It was late at night. The Fire trucks came from all the towns around us. It was hard to tell, sometimes, what was fire and what was flashing lights.

It was almost daylight before they got the fire out. The building was an old pool hall and the hotel. It had burned to the ground. That mustard seed must have heard me, because Mom's shop was okay.

It was about then I started going to a church just down the block from where the hotel had burned down. I liked going to church and singing about this guy named Jesus. I didn't know who he was, but they talked about him a lot. He liked little kids like us, so I thought he must have been a really good guy. They told us we could talk to him and ask him for things, and he would give us things. I asked where we could see him, and they told me you couldn't see him. Now I understood, he was like the invisible people I talked to in my hiding places.

I asked Mom if she would teach me to pray. It was Debbie that took me by the hand, got the family Bible and found the Lord's Prayer. She prayed with me for days, until I could remember it on my own. It was easy to pray, and then after I said that prayer, I started just talking to him, like I talked to my other invisible people. My family said those were my pretend friends, but to me they were just invisible. I loved them and they loved me back.

I always liked talking to grown ups. I loved to talk to my Grandma when Mom had to go to Decatur. She would be gone for a long time, and Grandma was so much fun. We played hide and seek, baked cookies, and Sonnie came to her house for lunch when she had 'Punkin Blossums'. He loved fried 'Punkin Blossums', and Fried Green Tomatos. I didn't like them, but I liked helping her make them, because my big brother loved them so much.

When I was bored, I would go visit the little old lady next door. We called her Aunt Minn. I loved to sit and talk to her, and listen to her stories about when she had babies, and what it was like 'in her day'. She was really old and she ended up going to a home where my Mom helped cook lunch.

I went to visit her one day and I told the lady in the front that I wanted to see Aunt Minn. They asked me her last name and I said Minn. They didn't have anyone there by that name, what was her first name and I said "I told you, Aunt". I had to be less than 5, I wasn't in school yet.

Someone recognized me as 'Norma's little girl' and the next thing I knew Mom came out and I got to see Aunt Minn. She didn't look the same. She looked really tired, and her skin was paper thin. She didn't recognize me. I never went back.

The Police Department was right across the street from our house so I used to go visit the "cop" that worked there. He told me that COP meant Constable On Patrol. I didn't know what a Constable was but I was glad he was one. I could talk to him for hours. He showed me on the big map on the wall where our little town was. That was when I knew where Decatur was that Mom used to go to all the time.

There was a shop across the street that made cabinets. We used to get saw dust off the floor for our cat Dusty's poop box. I really liked the smell when I walked in the door. If they were not really busy the guys would stop and talk to me while I got a paper bag full of dust. They were really nice guys. I liked talking to them.

There was a girl in a house next door to the cabinet shop that I didn't like very much. I got a Thumbelina doll for Christmas and she took it home with her. She wouldn't give it back and that made me really mad. So I never played with her again.

When all is said and done, that experience taught me how to forgive. While I never played with her again, I did not hate her for stealiing my doll.

I had a friend right next door for a while. One time she came to play with me on my swingset, and Dad was building a boat. She asked me what he was doing and I told her "Well, he is always telling my Mom what they will do when their ship comes in. I think he got tired of waiting for it, so he is building it instead." She agreed that made sense. She moved away, and I really missed her a lot.

Dad and Grandpa Benny started going to these secret meetings above the Fire Department. I didn't know what was so secret about them. There were a lot of people going in there with them. Kinda made me think my Dad was some kind of spy like on 'Mission Impossible'. It wasn't until years later that I understood what those meetings were. When I brought it up to my siblings, they didn't remember the meetings, but that's okay, it helped me to know more about my Dad.

Skip was in the Navy and went out on a ship. He did that a lot. Sometimes he came home and then before I knew it, Janie had another baby. The next one was a girl, then they had another boy. Shortly after that they moved off to a place called Hawaii. Skip told me it would be a long time before we saw them again. I missed them a lot, but it was quiet without the babies around.

I had to go to school, I didn't like it much. The teacher didn't seem to like me at all. She made me color these boxes, and I never could seem to get it right. If I didn't color them just right, I didn't get to go outside with the other kids during recess. When it was really cold outside, it didn't matter if I got them right or wrong, she made me go out side anyway.

The next year my new class was right next door to the other one. The kids I had in my class last year called me a flunky. Their classroom was a long way down the hall. I asked the teacher why they call me a flunky, what did that mean and she told me I was still in the first grade. Mom told me that my first teacher didn't think I was grown up enough to go on to the second grade. Well, I guess that is okay. I like this teacher, she was nice.

Grandma and Grandpa Benny moved a long way away to a place called Florida. Dad's sister Aunt Betty lived there, so they were moving to be with her. I had met Aumt Betty a few times, and she really loved me a lot for someone I didn't really know. She sent me stuff all the time from Florida. Once, when it was really cold outside, she sent me a can of Florida Sunshine. I wanted to open it to see the sunshine, and when I finally did, the can was empty. It must have leaked out.

The local radio station had a contest. Send in labels off of products and if yours is chosen, they sent a year of that product. I thought a year of Florida Sunshine sounded really good. I sent in my label and they picked it, but they announced that they could not send a year of Florida Sunshine, they sent Brillo Pads instead. Which was okay, Mom liked Brillo Pads.

After I had my tonsils out, Aunt Betty sent me a coconut. That was the biggest nut I had ever seen. It wasn't like the big nuts we served a Christmas, this shell would not break. I liked the cute monkey face on the top of it. I took the coconut to school for show and tell.

My second grade teacher was nice too. I really got tired of reading about Run Spot Run. School was so boring! I just wanted to be at home.

That summer Mom took us to Decatur. We had been there before, a lot. We all liked our Uncle Lenord and Aunt Phyllis. She was alot of fun, and I liked their son Mike a lot. He was really cute. He was Debbie's age though so he just saw me as a little kid.

Uncle Lenord sold motor cycles, was a pilot and had a plane. He said he would take us for a ride in his plane. I wasn't afraid when we got really high up off the ground, and I was really excited when we flew over our house in Maroa. I looked down at the trees, and yard, and the whole neighborhood, and realized I had seen it all before. It looked the same as when I flew like a bird in my dreams.

In the third grade my Dad was sick. He was in the hospital for a long time. I didn't understand, but I know Mom was upset about it, and that made me feel bad.

In SchoolI didn't like this teacher much. She wouldn't listen when I told her the boy that sat behind me would not stop pulling my hair. She told me he was her nephew and he would not do that. Some how I knew she had just called me a liar. I did not like that at all.

We had a few pets during these years, I don't remember some of them that the family talked about. I do remember the Cocker Spaniel Tina. She was a really sweet dog, but she stayed outside. She had puppies on the back porch and I sorta got to watch. I was really young, but Mom did not think that was something I should be watching so she made me get away from the door.

After the puppies were born they made Tina and the puppies live outside in the dog house. All the puppies died but one, and Dad said I could keep him. I named him snoopy because he was always snooping around. I did not know about Charlie Brown at that time. He was all black and didn't look anything like his mama. But he was fun to play with and I loved him very much.

His mama got sick and Dad had to "put her down" so she would not suffer. A couple of weeks later he had to put Snoopy down too. He got sick the same way his mama did. I was so angry that Dad did not do anything to save him. I was angry at him for a long time. Sometimes, I still have dreams about Snoopy coming out from under Dads chair and playing with me.

The big kids brought a kitten home for Mom and she fell in love with her. They called her Dusty. She was a long haired Tabby, and when we moved to Florida she came with us.

When Grandma moved to Florida she left me with her cat. I was supposed to take good care of him. One night I took him to bed with me, but he didn't want to stay. He ran away down the stairs and out the front door that was open. We didn't see him for three days. One night the front door was open.

Debbie went home for lunch. When she came back to school she found me outside the girl's restroom and told me that Dad found my cat. He was dead. I cried, and I think I went home for lunch and did not go back to school that day. I had failed Grandma. I let her cat die. I was ashamed.

Dad got a phone call from Grandma that Grandpa Benny had died. Mom, Dad and me drove all the way down to Florida to go to his funeral. He looked like he was sleeping. I wanted him to wake up and play with me. I cried when they told me he could not wake up. Aunt Betty took me to the Indian Reservation to ride the pony. That was a lot of fun.

When school ended that year we packed up the car, sold the house, and moved to Florida. I was 9 at the time and the move turned out to be good for me. I got to spend time with Grandma and Aunt Betty, and I got to go to the beach. Follow me to the adventures that met me there in Hollywood, Florida

My Story of Suzzanne Cook Carlson © 1958-2024  All rights reserved.

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