Aunt Mary's Life Story

rec'd feb23 2006
written by Mary Jean Axsom Beck Johnson

all of us at single's club will be asked to tell about ourselves. i've been working on my life story as I didn't want to wait and then panic whenever it's my turn. Virginia (Flanagan Matson) wrote many interesting things she remembers and gave me a copy not long ago, so I gave her a copy of mine. I rewrote some of mine and made a few minor changes and some of it is a little neater now than her copy was. we have a maximum of a half hr., which I think mine will be.
"WHO AM I?"
On Sept. 30 1939 my mother "Mary" Pauline Axsom entered in her diary: I discovered today that Alfred and I are going to have a baby, we are very happy about it."
On May 29 1040 I was born on my parents farm north of Cainsville, MO, just nine days after my mother's eighteenth birthday. I was named Mary Jean, the Mary being after my mom and the Jean being after her sister Betty Jean.
My life has been a roller coaster ride.
When I was eleven mos. old I had whooping cough. Mom told me that I had to begin learning to walk all over again.
When I was nineteen mos. old my sister Freeda was born. I called her "Little Peeda." When I was four years old our brother Bernard was born, they were towheads.
I had red hair, fair skin, a thousand freckles and I sunburned easily.
Our old farmhouse had no electricity or indoor plumbing or any insulation. We had wood burning stoves for both cooking and heating. Our upstairs bedrooms were stifling hot in the summer and frigid in the winter. Our drinking water was pumped from a well and kept in a bucket with a "dipper" in the kitchen. Sometimes on winter mornings there would be ice in the bucket.
The roads would be muddy after a rain or thawing days in winter. Often times there were deep ruts. For several years we made trips to and from town with horses and wagon. Mom and us youngsters would be nestled down in the wagon bed all comfy in straw with blankets over us while dad sat up on the spring seat and drove the horses. One night upon returning home (when I was four) something spooked the horses while dad was unfastening a gate. The horses bolted and ran down a ravine, overtuning the wagon box atop us. Luckily the only injury was my bloody nose.
After we got a car, a Nash, when I was 7 or 8 we'd park it out at a gravel road in the winter.
Come May 1st we could begin going barefoot just as Mom & her siblings had done. We spent many carefree hours chasing and catching lightening bugs, exploring and picking wildflowers in the woodlands by our house or wading in the creek or riding our Shetland pony "Sparkle." We often rode our pony to our Axsom grandparents home a mile away. As we rode up and down country roads we loved to sing. Our favorite song was "You Are My Sunshine."
Sometimes we'd accompany Grandma & Grandpa to Rock Riffle where Grandpa enjoyed fishing or to an animal auction barn in Princeton.
Sometimes we'd listen to "Baby Snooks" or "The Great Gildersleeve" with grandpa on his battery powered radio.
We loved to play with paper dolls, baby dolls, dress up and pretend. Many times we'd build a playhouse in an empty grainbin only to be evicted at harvest time.
A special treat was getting several months of Sunday funnies from the Des Moines paper from our Grandma Shafer who lived there. In summertime we'd lay on a blanket under a big oak tree and read "Lil' Abner," "The Katzenjammer Kids" and "Blondie and Dagwood."
In 1946 I began first grade at Moore School, a one room country school a mile in the opposite direction from Grandma and Grandpa Axsom. Soon, I loved to read. Mom called me a "bookworm." I learned to shoot marbles as good as the boys even though I was a "Southpaw." Every Halloween the girls toilet would be overturned.
The following year Freeda began first grade. The school held a box supper. Mom made crepe paper roses to decorate a box for herself and another one to be shared by Freeda and me. We were shy and had to be coaxed to join the two nice, grandfatherly men who bought our boxed dinner.
During my third grade, older boys terrorized the school. An eighth grader knocked the young, female teacher across a desk and broke her glasses.
It was customary for teachers to teach 6th and 8th grades one year and 5th and 7th grades the next year rather than all 8 grades in the same year. Therefore, I had to jump from 4th grade to 6th grade studies.
Moore School and two other country schools would visit each other during the school year. We would have cipherin' matches. Those were fun days and I made new friends and pen pals.
The road past our house was steep and hilly and was perfect for sled riding. It seemed like we had much more snow then. Mom would make snow ice cream from fresh fallen snow.
In the spring time Mom would order baby chickens from a hatchery. The mailman would deliver the cheeping chicks in a big cardboard box that had air holes in it.
Mom and Dad always had a big garden near the house and a "truck patch" garden elsewhere. Dad dug a cellar to hold potatoes and the hundreds of jars of vegetables and fruit that Mom canned each year. One evening we headed to our cellar when the sky appeared ominous.
Grandpa Johnnie had cancer and made many trips back and forth to the cancer hospital in Columbia, Mo. The trip required overnight stays in either Moberly or Booneville. Sometimes we got to go along on those trips.
When I was probably 9 or 10 years old, Dad came home from the field in early afternoon during harvest. He was hallucinating and believed that others in the field were plotting to harm him. An uncle of dad's sat on our back porch and promised to protect us. The adults believed that dad had had a nervous breakdown. For several weeks he refused to see a doctor. It was a scary time for Mom and us kids. Nowadays, I think he may have had a heat stroke.
Dad continued to have bad feelings about the community and so he and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma began looking at farms around Trenton, Mo., which was forty five miles away. Farm families moved in March, so the move began in March 1951 before my eleventh birthday in May. The household goods were moved then the mover's (PUNK OXFORD) truck broke down. Grandma and Grandpa got Freeda, Bernard, and me enrolled in Central Elementary School in Trenton. We rode the bus along with high school students. Mom and Dad remained at Cainsville, staying three weeks at Grandma and Grandpa's house and walking back and forth to their farm to milk cows and care for livestock until the move could be completed.
The "new" farmhouse was on a dead end lane near a black top road. It had elecricity, but no indoor plumbing and we still had wood stoves.
A kindly, older neighbor lady invited us kids to go with her to attend vacation bible school at her one room, country baptist church near Tindall, Mo. As a result our entire family began attending church there. A preacher would come up from St. Joseph every other Sunday to preach. My parents were perfect examples of how a Christian should live.
Just before I turned twelve my youngest brother, Roger was born by c-section. I believed that mom and dad were too old to be having another baby. I did not tell even my best friend taht Mom was expecting, so she was in total disbelief when the teacher announced that I had a baby brother.
When this baby grasped one of my fingers with his tiny hand my heart melted. It was pure love! By age two, he was my little shadow.
We got our first Tv, a B/W set, when I was twelve.
We had all of the usual childhood diseases like measles, chickenpox, and mumps. Mom got the chickenpox from us and both she and dad got the mumps. When I had a bad ear ache Grandpa blew warm smoke from his pipe into my ear. My era infection was a mastoid infection. The doctor opted to give penicillin shots a try before surgery. He met mom and me at his office every day for a week-even Sunday. The penicillin was a success and we were grateful.
When I was thirteen Grandpa Johnnie died with all of us at his bedside. Grandma wanted Grandpa's body to lay in state in our living room. This was my first experience with a wake.
At age fourteen, a neighbor girl was babysitting. I wanted to earn money too, so I pleaded with Mom to allow me to help a wheelchair bound woman in Brimson, Mo. I earned $10.00 per week and got Sundays off. After five weeks of homesickness I had no desire to tough it out the entire summer. I was proud that I'd earned enough money to buy my school books, a Timex wrist watch and a few little Golden books for Roger.
During my sophomore year, Mom worked at tht "Bulldog Inn", a restaurant directly across the street from the high school building. Some days I would get a study hall pass before noon to go help her in readiness for the lunch crowd. I treasured our time together. The most frequently played songs on the juke box there were "Mule Train" and Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons." We soon tired of hearing them!
During both junior high and high school I took all of the singing, art, and home economics classes that were available. Mom jokingly called me Margaret Truman when I came home singing "O Sole Mio."
At home I learned to cook on a wood stove. I don;'t remember exaclty when Mom got a bottle gas range. I loved to cook, but hated to milk cows, so cooking was a terrific trade off even though Mom insisted, "You have to clean up your own messes!"
We grew up having a few chores and responsibilities, which I believe every child should have. We carried in firewood, gathered eggs, walked to the mailbox, picked up potatoes after school at harvest time, cleaned lamp chimneys, hoed weeds, broke up beans and hulled peas and brought the cows to the barn at milking time.
At age 15. I won a blue ribbon for my yeast rolls at the country fair in Trenton. In 4-H competition, I won blue ribbons both locally and at inter-state in St. Joseph,Mo. for my pencil drawings of angel's faces and a beagle pup.
That summer my sister and I earned 75 cents per hr. working a few hrs. per week helping process chickens at a neighbor's broiler ranch.
During high school my sister and I became great pals. Mom and Dad welcomed our friends and we'd both invite several friends each school year for a big slumber party.
In May 1958 I graduated. I'm so glad that I got to attend a small school such as Trenton High rather than the huge schools we have in the K.C. Metro area. Dad encouraged me to enjoy the summer on the farm with my siblings and not get a job right away. He stressed, "There's plenty of time to head off the city to find a job. Just enjoy this summer with your siblings. Once you put your nose to the grindstone, it will be a long hard grind!" How right he was and how much I loved him for that one last wonderful summer before leaving the nest. In Sept. I came to K.C. on the train to seek employment. I began working at Hallmark Cards as a card inspector. I rode the Metro to and from work. Bus fare was 25 cents. There were still cable cars on the northeast bus line. Some evenings I'd stop off downtown to shop. Downtown had many fine stores that stayed open late on Thursday evenings. Nearly every Friday night I would be at Union Station boarding the train for home for the weekend.
Cruising was popular with teenagers in the 50's just as it is today. One Fri. evening when my sister and her best friend met me at the depot they excitedly told me they'd met two guys also cruising. We caught up with the two guys at the Dairy Queen. They were from Mercer, MO. My sister and I double dated a few times. After graduation, my sister married "her guy."
One Sat. in Nov. 1959 I was working overtime when I got a call that my apartment house was on fire. My roommates were out of town. God was with us that the fire had not occured at night! That same mo. I had a tonsilectomy.
One day I was told that Mr. Hall (Joyce C., I thinnk) had selected me for my neat handwriting to address his personal Christmas card envelopes. He did me not favor! The quota for this job was 90 envelopes per hour. It was three days before I got a reprieve from this job.
It was through a coworker/friend that I met Alvin "Al" Warren Beck the son of German born parents. He'd grown up on a farm near Silver Lake, Ks. and was a K.U. Alumni and a U.S. Navy veteran. After dating 10 mos., Al and I were married by a justice of the peace in Newkirk, Okla. Meantime I had left Hallmark Cards at the end of two years employment and was working in retail sales at Emery-Bird-Thayer in downtown K.C. There was a BLUE LAW then that prohibited dept. stores from opening on Sundays.
In April 1964, following severe financial losses on the farm my mom and dad and my youngest brother Roger (then 12) relocated to San Jose, Ca. It would be nine and one half years before I saw Dad again.
In June 1964 (at age 25) I had a tubal pregnancy that ruptured. My B.P. dropped to 75/0 and I was rushed to surgery. Sick leave was not paid for pregnancy caused illnesses and our insurance did not cover all the medical expenses. My husband worked one week of his vacation to help offset some of the debt. I continued to hope for a child, but it was not to be.
In Aug. 1968 Emery Bird Thayer went out of business after 105 yrs. I had worked there 8 yrs. It was a grand old store and had been called the finest store west of the Mississippi River when it opened. I'd loved working there.
My husband Al had 5 surgeries in a 3 yr. period from 1969 into 1972. We never wavered from our vows "To love, honor and cherish in sickness or in health."
In 1972 we bought our first home. We loved doing things together in and around the house and in the yard. I had never been happier. Then, in Nov. 1973 (shortly before our thirteenth wedding anniversary) I was widowed at age thirty three when Al died unexpectedly from a heart attack at age forty three. He had been my soul mate. My dreams of us growing old together were shattered. Nothing in my entire life had prepared me for the gut-wrenching grief I experienced.
About two and one half years later I met Lewis "Fred" Johnson (at probably the most vulnerable time in my life) and I remarried. During the marriage which ended in divorce I spent a Thanksgiving and Christmas at Hope House because of threats he made to burn the house down. I had married a flim flam man. There were two separate fires in our basement on Thanksgiving Day. The fire dept. suspected Fred of arson. I'll always believe he was guilty.
In early 1985 my youngest brother Roger was diagnosed as terminal. That July mom and dad and their four children were all together for the first time in twenty one years. Roger died in Jan. 1987. Mom and dad were devastated.
In Apr. 1992, Mom was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. She began chemo and she was optimistic.
In June 1992 I went with SAF on my first trip, which I enjoyed immensely. Dorothy Meier and Bob Nield also went. My canoe partner Marshall Landau and I began dating.
On Nov. 9 Mom's doctor gave her possibly 6 mos. to live when her cancer came back aggressively. She asked me if I would come and help dad care for her. I did not hesitate to say "Yes." I was in San Jose on Dec 1 and Mom died on Dec. 6th.
In Jan 1994 Marshall had a cerebral hemorrage and died 6 days later. He had been a boon to me during my mom's illness and death.
Occupations I've had were: 10 years in home health care (one house was burglarized in the night while I was on duty. The burglars did not come upstairs where we were and were long gone before a lone cop responded to my 9-1-1 call. 3 of those 10 yrs. I also worked weekends at Resthaven where I earned a CMT license. Before I retired I worked 7 1/2 years at Dillard's Dept. Store.
In 1991 my dad died peacefully in his sleep at just past 87 years old.
Presently, I am a member of River Blvd. Baptist Church where I was baptized in early 1989. I am a substitute "Grandma" and mentor for 3 girls who were all baptised at my church. I love them and try to be a good role model. I hike, walk, grow flowers, go to creative writing classes, and enjoy genealogy and sharing information with relatives. Just this past year I learned that a maternal great-great grandmother was 3/4 Cherokee Indian. I've been a SAF member since Sept. 1986.
I grew up in the best of times-the world will never be like it was then-we sometimes thought we didn't have much, but how rich we were to have lived in the world of trust, good friends, and a loving family. My life has been full. I have been blessed.
Mary Axsom 2-18-06
(yes, she signed it MARY AXSOM.)
as transcribed by deb_dailey feb 23 3006

on feb 24 i rec'd another letter....with things she'd omitted, wanted changed, etc.:
put after Marshall's death: In 2001, my died died, etc.....after this comes occupations and then after baptized in early 1989: When we had a choir, I sang in it. My preferences in music are gospel or classical.
My dad died in 2001. al and I were married Nov 30 1960.
country fair should've been county fair.

the feedback.....
email from lisa butler feb 24 2006 Maybe I'm just older than I care to admit, tired, or just plain stupid but
how on earth can ANYONE remember all these details. For example, I know I
worked at Dairy Queen when I went to TJC, probably for 18 months or longer.
I have absolutely how much money I made, what I was paying at the time for
my 1/3 of the rent, or even 90% of my coworkers names. If I was Aunt Mary I
could tell you exactly how many hours I had worked there, how to make every
item on the menu and how much they cost, etc. Jeez....

email from barry west feb 24 2006 Thanks Deb, a wonderful written story.
Barry
I have been doing some research on the Robert Cornett family that was at Akron, MO and at Davis City, Iowa. Trying to find out more information on Alice Cornett my mother's grandmother.
Barry WEst

deb of course is very glad for aunt mary's wonderful memory, and attributes some of it to the fact that she wasn't spending years raising children and had more time to pay attention to the world in general. all those creative writing classes she takes seem to be paying off, plus give us a trove of family stories to preserve. i was happy to share this with you guys.
from marie boyd west feb 25 2006 Thanks!! Deb for sharing such a delightful story. It was so interesting to me because it was my like exactely until I was 11 and we moved off that farm that Mary is talking about . We moved to Iowa. My parents lived there 18 years and the old house was exactly as Mary described it. We could throw a cat thru the cracks or it seemed like since it was so cold. Three of us kids were born there. . We went to the Moore school and had the box suppers and school plays . We would walk up the same road to Uncle Johnny and Aunt Daisys farm and visit with grandma Axsom and Willie on the corner where we got our mail. Alfred and Pauline moved in when we moved out or right after they got married, I think,. It brought back so many memeries Those were hard times for our paernts and we were poor but everyone else was to, so we didn't know we were missing anything. But I do know one thing, if we hadn't got off that old poor farm, I probnably wouldn't of gone on to High school and be where I am today. The last time we were down there , all the building were gone but the two old Oak treees were still there where My brother Billy asnd I use to play under and spent many hours, When we lived there we had a cellar and mom and us kids spent many a nite in it because mom was so afraid of storms. Dad would stay in bed in the house. Deb, if you will send me your address I will send you a picture taken at Moore school with all us school kids, Pauline, Ralph, Junior, Dean, and Mary Jean , Warren, (my brother) and I, and several other children .I am glad Mary mentioned anout the school system ther, when you got to the 4th grade you skipped to the sixth. My parents made me take the 4th over again so I would hit the year that they taught the 5th. I have told this to so many people anout how they skipped the grades there, they wouldn't believe me and I was beginning to think I was wrong. Marvin also went to school with us but don't think he is in this picture. Thanks so much.
Marie Boyd West